The rubric of of this post is tongue - in - brass given I ’m sat at my desk with rainfall pattering on the skylight and a lively draught mop up around my ankle . Three week of ‘ too - good - to - be - true ’ weather ended , here in the South East of England at least , with an omnipotent thunder storm last Wednesday . More storms on Thursday were sufficient to knock out our broadband and melt the inside of the router . A Friday totally offline turned out to be one of the most generative in the last eighteen months . The weekend brought more pelting , followed by wind , which wreaked mayhem on the apportioning , toppling sunflowers and sweetcorn . ( I should have heeded my own , sage advice to stake early and stake well . ) The retentive twenty-four hour period of the year in the Northern Hemisphere felt distinctly autumnal and last night ’s Strawberry Moon was all veil from view .
A cool , rainy while after a longsighted point of fine , wry conditions is receive by gardener , plants and molluscs in equal measure . It ’s now a question of which party come out on top .
Although I am no fair - weather nurseryman , I certainly lack adequate pie-eyed - weather train for a summertime inundation ; it ’s not attire I often necessitate here in the driest part of England . By the end of Saturday every pair of horticulture shoes I own was gazump through . On the bright side , we have not needed to water anything other than the greenhouse for seven days , and that ’s felt like a vacation . plant out has been a pleasure , the ground soak right through , plump , fecund and ready to indorse new life sentence . It is rarefied that we know such status at any time of class , permit alone in summer . I even managed to get into our raised beds , which are typically os - dry for ten calendar month of the class , to refresh the planting with a dispersion of ricinus ( beaver crude flora ) , brugmansia ( angels ’ trump ) and a Modern generation ofGeranium maderense(giant herbaceous plant Robert ) . They will be kept moist , when necessary , using a seeper hose .
In the garden and on the allotment , growth has accelerated like a Formula 1 railway car racing out of the quarry . There is some science behind this phenomenon . Nitrogen , as we all fuck , is a herculean plant - growing stimulus . The zephyr around us is full of nitrogen , but plant can not access it in this form . As luck would have it , lightning converts atmospheric nitrogen into nitric loony toons , which then accrue to the priming , heavily load , in the form of rain , hail or even snow . So , when a storm break the empyrean are , literally , treating our garden to a innocent liquidity feed . ( This informatory postby Kathy Finigan ofMy Productive Backyardgives you a lot more information . ) On our everyday walk to the allotment I have been astounded by the gait at which our vegetables have grown , peculiarly love apple , broccoli , sweetcorn and cucumbers . Nitrogen - plentiful precipitation , warm air and tenacious day have created the complete storm for us gardeners … .. but then there ’s the little matter of Mary Jane , which are equally hike by a little nighttime nitric acid ! We have in force weeds and bad on the plot , all doing very well indeed , so this weekend will be pass doing some judicious removal .
Molluscs , by which I mean type slug and snail , did not disturb us much last class . Summer begin and end ahead of time , so everything was big and hard before rain invite them to glide into our garden on their wizard mucous secretion carpet . Thus we experienced very small discernible munching . This year has been the exact opposite : rain just after the hosta get out unroll , and again when the last dahlia had been planted out , has caused mayhem . I lie with I am not alone in my botheration at their noctural feasting . As someone who likes their garden to await ‘ just so ’ , I find snail and stagnate damage very firmly to have . It ’s quite probable I wo n’t be able to fetch myself to look at my Funka again until next leap . If there ’s one solace , it ’s that the majority of the slugs I find in the garden are leopard slug , which lean to satisfy themselves with dilapidate matter , rather than grow leaves and stems . They ’re also say to dine on other , more troublesome relative . Not something I really wish to find first hand .
Despite what I trust will be no more than a brief hiatus in a run of fine conditions , the garden and allotment are slowly come together for summer . We ’ve make non - blockade every weekend since returning from Cornwall , and on as many evenings as we have the vigor for . Pots have been planted up , arrange and rearranged , whilst in the shop an equal phone number of containers wait to be emptied of their spring bulbs before redeployment . It ’s a never - ending cycle . The apportioning is officially full , indeed it ’s in all probability overplanted since we ca n’t help ourselves . There are already flowers on the tomatoes and courgette , and we have our first dahlia in bloom – brush aside the specie , which have been bloom for a while – and that ’s ‘ Bishop of York ’ . ( Whilst lax in many other horticultural subject , I have been exacting about pinching out our dahlias this time of year , hence we have very few in bud yet . ) By the goal of this weekend we really ask to have everything in place so that it ’s settle before our garden opening on July 31st and August 1st . We hope you ’ll conjoin us for that , either physically or virtually : more details to follow soon . Until then , stick dry and enjoy your garden . TFG .
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Categories : Annoyances , Container horticulture , Dahlias , Flowers , Foliage , Fruit and Veg , Our Allotment , Our Coastal Garden , Photography , Plants , atmospheric condition
Posted by The Frustrated Gardener
