Kitchen Garden Forum

Has anybody noticed how late the ash trees are in coming into leaf? At least they are in our area and the oak trees are already nicely green. If the saying "Oak before ash, in for a splash, ash before oak, in for a soak" is really true, we should be getting a scorcher this year!

The rain the last few days has been very welcome, though. The ground is well and truly soaked and, if the weather is ok tomorrow, I shall plant all our remaining brassicas. The ones planted earlier have really shot up the last week or so.

Hi Monika,
Certainly the Ash have yet to produce any leaves in this district but the high winds of late have distributed last years seeds or at least a large proportion of them. These seeds are a real problem here. I would have literally thousands of Ash saplings every year. When the nusery was open every shrub growing had at least two Ash seedlings and times a few thousand means a lot of work to control them and even then they managed to still grow.
JB.

Hi Monika

Some of our ash are late this year - a few only just coming into leaf now.
I suspect the saying about oak and ash refers to "English" oak (pedunculate oak - Quercus robur). All our oaks in wooded Eifionydd are sessile oaks (Quercus petraea) and are always in leaf about a month before the ash. Were your English oaks later than the ash in the last two years, when we all had a soak rthaer than a splash?