Wednesday, 25 March 2020
Lockdown Day 1 - Warmest Day of the Year!
Tuesday was our first day of UK lockdown. We expected it was coming as the request made on Friday for responsible social distancing was in many quarters simply ignored as over the weekend many tourist attractions saw crowds more associated with a Bank Holiday. The official lockdown came on Monday evening. It is not as severe as some countries have adopted but nevertheless requires some major lifestyle changes. The rules state that you can have one trip outside the house to 'exercise' once a day. We wondered what exactly could be considered as exercise and whether a trip to the allotment would come under this rule.
We had to wait until Tuesday morning for confirmation, when a government minister replied to a question on TV that it was indeed okay to work on an allotment provided all the social distancing and other requirements were adhered to. We often have the allotments to ourselves apart from our plot neighbour so we didn't see any great risk in a visit to the plot.
On a beautiful, sunny Tuesday afternoon we did indeed virtually have the allotments to ourselves. It was easy enough to maintain the required distance from our plot neighbour who is fully aware of the necessity of social distancing. It was very unusual to see a clear blue sky without any aircraft contrails. Tuesday turned out to be our warmest day of the year with the temperature reaching a very pleasant 19.5°C (67.1°F) the warmest day since the 23 September 2019 when the temperature reached 20.7°C or 69.3°F.
On the allotment things are looking up. March has been a much drier month and beds have dried out very well after their winter water logging.
Temperature & Rainfall Records March 2020
There's a few more dry days forecast before it's predicted to turn cold and damp over next weekend. I decided to try to get a few beds dug over before the weather turns and to my surprise the soil was in pretty good condition for cultivating.
Hopefully, our early potatoes might get planted in early April, once next week's cold snap is over, which would be not much later than normal. One drawback of the lovely sunny days has been cold nights. Early on Monday morning the temperature fell to -2.4° (27.7°F) colder than anything we had in December, January and February. It comes just as the plum and greengage blossom is coming into flower.
Greengage - Mannings
Hopefully, this time people will stick to the new lockdown rules or I'm sure they will be made even stricter and even tighter restriction on travel will be imposed. The lockdown is due to be reviewed in 3 weeks time to see if it is managing to slow down the spread of the Coronavirus.
Monday, 30 March 2020
Lockdown Day 7 - What to Sow!
It's the end of the first week of lockdown. The weather at the start of the lockdown was really good. It was the first time since the end of September that we'd had anything like a decent day's weather as the temperature soared to a little over 19°C (66°F) and the sun shone.
Temperature and Wind Chill Records 21-30 March 2020
It's the first time since last September we've had a whole week without any rain. Looking back through my rainfall records, I'm surprised that I have to go back to 18-24 May 2019 for the last time we had a week without any recorded rainfall. Rather amazingly, we've now had 10 dry days in a row. Last year we had 19 dry days in a row from 05 to 23 April leaving us with a few days to go to match that record.
However, there's been a definite change in the weather over the last week. Although it's remained dry the wind has moved into a north or north easterly direction turning the weather much colder, with Saturday and Sunday feeling particularly cold with the wind chill.
Gardening wise things are very much on hold due to both the weather and Covid 19. Whilst the vast majority of our seeds were ordered online at the beginning of the year, I tend to buy in compost as I need it for sowing seeds and potting on plants. As a result of Covid 19 that leaves us with a very limited supply of compost as all garden centres are closed. I'll have to consider carefully the seeds we should sow and how they will be potted on. At the moment I think I'll leave sowing any seeds at all until some milder weather returns.
Suggestions at the government Covid 19 briefing yesterday were that social distancing measures might need to be in place for the next 6 months. Life, as we used to know it, has changed completely with little hope of it returning to anything like normal in the near future. Hopefully, when the lockdown measures are reviewed in another 2 weeks they will have had some effect on the spread of the disease and at least these measures will be relaxed slightly.