Wednesday, 15 May 2019
The Cold Nights Have It!
We've had a couple of lovely days with the temperatures through the day making it into the low 20 degrees Celsius or around the 70 degree Fahrenheit mark. However, us gardeners are never satisfied with the weather. The problem is that in May, it's not so much the daytime high temperatures that cause problems but more the night time lows.
Average May Low Temperatures 2010 -2019
The table above show the running average low temperatures for May for the last 10 years. The red box highlights the average temperature by the time we've reached the fourteenth of the month and as you can see 2019 has now become the coldest with a temperature of 5.0°C or 41.0°F. Hopefully, that value will now go on increasing over the rest of May.
It's been cold enough for a light frost to catch the leaves of some of our emerging potatoes although some have remained unscathed. Checking over our strawberry flowers they all seem undamaged so not too much harm done. It's not the first time our potatoes have been caught by the frost and they've always recovered in the past.
Sunday, 19 May 2019
Running Out Of Space
Last week saw some warmer weather arrive by both day and night and the result is plants have started to grow much quicker. Suddenly it's a question of finding space for all the seedlings as they need potting on from seedling stage into larger pots.
Our home greenhouse is filling up rapidly. There's seedlings growing on for a few days before being moved to the cold frame to harden off and become accustomed to the outside world and trays of seeds still to germinate.
These are mostly trays of runner beans and climbing French beans which have only just been sown. Hopefully, they'll germinate quickly as this space will soon be required for a summer crop of tomatoes. Over the last week with the warmer weather the greenhouse has been transformed as plants suddenly decide it's time to grow. Instead of plants needing watering every couple of days due to cold, cloudy days and nights, they now have to be watered twice a day especially if the sun makes an appearance. With the arrival of warmer weather we've started moving plants to the plot. This week we managed to erect our coppiced hazel supports and get our sweet peas planted out.
The space vacated in the cold frame by the sweet peas was soon taken up by some broad bean and brassica plants. The next couple of weeks will be busy moving seedlings between greenhouse and cold frame and planting them out on the plot.