Kitchen Garden Forum

With you there Alan! Got a full happy sun on my phone weather for tomorrow & just light cloud & the sunny rays for the next 2 weeks - but most importantly the temp is up as well. My soil temp did go up despite this wind & rain though, was 5.6 a week ago & 6.4 on Wednesday - give it a week & I'll find a Victorian gardener to test it accurately!

Friends whose boys have now left home decided to cease growing veg at home and asked if I would be interested in three raised beds.
Borrowed a decent trailer after lining up another friend to help and benefit.
So now I have six garden sleepers approx eight foot long each, my friend has about two tons of topnotch topsoil and our mutual friends are on the way to having a nice lawn.
Happy all round.

A beautiful morning out there this morning....

oldherbaceous wrote:A beautiful morning out there this morning....

And many more to come for the rest of the month

I'm so glad someone else shares my optimism....

I would not call it beautiful but the rain has stopped and the wind has eased now the hail stones have started

We finished with 40mm yesterday and had two short but hefty sleet showers this morning with a cold NW wind, but the sun has come out again and I have sown the first mixed salad leaves and radish in the greenhouse, potted on the chilli and sweet peppers and the tomatoes are up as well.

I went along to the Big house today, and said to the owners, "we won't see anymore wet weather for a couple of weeks"......I had only been home about haf an hour and we had nearly an hour of hail and rain.....and yes, my ears were burning...

The April showers seem to have come early. I fear most of the spring bulbs will be over and finished well before Easter .

Some of us locally have been commenting that many of the copious daffodils around our village green have come up blind this year and are a shadow of their normal glory. We,re wondering whether last year's heatwave might have been the cause although I seem to recall the dying leaves might have been mown down somewhat earlier than normal last spring which may have affected them Has anybody else noticed a similar poorer performance than normal for their daffodil bulbs this year ?

oldherbaceous wrote:I went along to the Big house today, and said to the owners, "we won't see anymore wet weather for a couple of weeks"......I had only been home about haf an hour and we had nearly an hour of hail and rain.....and yes, my ears were burning...

Similar thing here this morning, though without the hail. It hasn't dampened my optimism for the rest of the month

Not down here Primrose, some beautiful displays on the verges and islands.

The smiley sun on my phone weather was not a fib & it was out this morning & lots of people down the site. The easterly wind, rain & hail were not appreciated late morning. Put the pea plants in & fingers crossed I will not be feeding the mice or birds; but my biggest achievement was digging the couch grass out of the front fence. I know I haven't got it all but it's been a long time since the chicken wire was clear of green or white tufts of the stuff.

oldherbaceous wrote:I went along to the Big house today, and said to the owners, "we won't see anymore wet weather for a couple of weeks"......I had only been home about haf an hour and we had nearly an hour of hail and rain.....and yes, my ears were burning...

Similar thing here this afternoon, started with a couple of random minutes, dotted over ten minutes, of pitter-patter hail, then the temperature dropped markedly and the hail set in.

Thing was I was splitting the logs I cut two Fridays ago, with a little supervisory assistance from the dogs. Electric hydraulic splitter, so shoved big dog indoors, packed away the splitter, shut the shed, hoovered up the chainsaw sawdust that came in with me & splitter. By then it had turned from hail to really cold rain, so jacked it in and carried puppy indoors for her next meal.

Hmm.
I had three variations as I walked today. Initially, as I was out bound it was decidedly breezy (not quite gale force but chilly and sharp, it made me turn my back into it and I walked as close to the hedge as I could). I was then walking in woodland, so the wind didn't matter. As I returned, the sun came out and it was lovely until less than half a mile from home it started raining and a little hail as I walked the 400 yards from the canal to home.

It still feels too cold for most things.

Another grey day with drizzle, it would be nice to get some light to bring things on in the greenhouse.

I think I can say I have every bed weeded & dug (net tunnel & cauliflower bed excluded, although cauli's are forming a more pointed head so the cats may have once again changed the labels)! The raspberries were a pain with couch grass wrapped under the new stems. I was only down there at the weekend & today when I went down so many of the kale & kalette's had decided to flower. Rescued as many leaves as I could off them but there were a few bees enjoying the rocket flowers so left them. It's fine I know they will self sow everywhere, but it's edible & bees need something to nourish them.