Kitchen Garden Forum

Despite the forecasts the heavy rain hasn't materialised here in Carmarthenshire - very windy yes. And maybe April will be the wettest on record but April is normally a dry month. My records only go back to 2007 and yes it is the wettest but at 5.16 ins it is still less than the monthly average for 'normal' year. And temperature-wise it is certainly going to be very cool - 6.4C so far compared with 11.6C last year and 11.7C in April 2007 compared with a CET mean temp for April of 8.0C

And apparently on 23rd March the Met issued their 3 monthly forecast expecting a slightly drier than average 3 months with April being the driest. I don't know what the experience of everyone else is, but I am finding their 24hr forecasts less and less reliable. Something wrong with the models somewhere. Perhaps they need to factor in Sunspots!

We didn't get too much rain either, but the wind!!! When it comes from the NE here, it whistles down straight off the moor and we really cop it. The maximum temperature today was 4 degrees and even in the greenhouse with the heater on, it only reached 9 degrees. My weather records go back almost 30 years and I think today must be the coldest late April day we have ever had.

One day I will go through my weather diaries over the 30 years and transfer them all onto the computer - should make interesting reading.

Monika - one week at the end of April, think it was 1968, we had frosts and fog most days and it was really cold. I was away on a course and came back to find all my tomatoes completely gone. Admittedly they were in a makeshift sort of cloche. That was in Hemel Hempstead too, not here in Carmarthenshire.

More recently than that, wasn't there a year when lots of potatoes all over the country were frosted in May? It may have been 1976 before that drought.

Seeing a funny red thing in the sky this morning, thought I would shoot down to the lotty to empty bag of peelings etc on the manure heap. Found a beautiful row of self-sown potatoes doing very well, trouble is they are growing through the shallots.

Certainly one year in the 1970s we had night frosts well into June and then the first autumn frost on 30 August - that year, June was the only frost-free month here.

But today was a lovely day with much gentler and warmer SE winds: planted out the first row of broad beans on the allotment (Witkiem Manita) which had been waiting in roottrainers, albeit outside in shelter, at home. Also sowed beetroot, spring onion, radish and cut-and-come-again lettuce under a cloche. Also sowed the next lot of broad beans (Masterpiece Green Longpod) in roottrainers at home and soaked the first lot of peas (Hurst Green Shaft) for sowing in two/three days' time. At last a bit of movement though night frosts are forecast again for the weekend.

Just to complete the records for April, with a temperature of 43.5F it equals that of Jan 2007 and is 9.3F lower than April last year and 2.2F lower than March this year. And yes, May does look as though it is shaping up much the same.

The one advantage of all this is that I haven't had to worry about things being scorched or dried out in the greenhouse. Indeed, the lettuce there are doing splendidly, as are those in the cold-frame. And the grass is growing so slowly - and the weeds! - did a first hoe today

One real oddity has been that Parsnips (Archer) sown April 12th are germinating, but Peas (Greenshaft) sown April 8th aren't.