Now I am not complaining about the sun, I love the sun. I adore the warm days and seeing cloudless skies, but my allotment hasn't been so keen. As many of you know, I do not have access to piped water on our site, so have to rely on mother nature. Waterbutts have been emptied and refilled courtesy of a neighbour to the site and her hose, but the ground has become dust dry with deep cracks and wilting plants. Seeds aren't germinating at all. No swedes, carrots, parsnips, oriental greens or florence fennel. However, in the last 24 hours the temps have halved and we had lots of good prolonged drizzle yesterday and then a damp and chilly day today, just perfect to water the seed beds and hopefully get things moving. Of course, it is also ideal weather for tomato and potato blight to set in, so I will have to keep an eye on things, but fingers crossed for some serious germination in the next couple of days.
I think we've swapped weather conditions EJ. We had the rain until today and now we have sunshine. My garden needed a break from being watered so Mother Nature must have thought she'd let you have some for your lottie. :-D
Yes, such weather is like a double-edged sword--life-saving water for the poor wilting plants and the ideal conditions for phytophthora and the like. I am braced. I started removing spuds today. The toms are in the greenhouse, but I shall keep the door open for shorter periods of time. My ground was like yours--I could have incertesd my hand into those cracks! It is bad because not only was the upper layer dry, but with those deep cracks moisture was escaping from the deeper levels in the soil as well. Well, blight or not--my little plants needed water badly. I hope that the blight will not hit your plots, EJ.
