Dealing with the Drought

A plotholder making his way home after a morning on his field. Donkey Lane - what a beautiful, peaceful image in the middle of the city. It has been sugggested that Donkey Lane ( Dead Man's Lane) is the original, ancient highway into Bristol from the north. And what a delight it is!

Dealing with the Drought

Well for our part of the country, in fact for most of the UK, April has been the warmest on record and the driest for 30 years. It seems, in Bristol, we’ve had 3mm of rain, during a month we expect to be and plan for being a sunny but wet month, just warming up after winter. This year we’ve had temperatures higher than many summers. In Surrey, in the south of England temperatures reached in excess of 28°c.

This is wonderful. After such a harsh and damaging winter, haven’t we just loved getting up in the morning to guaranteed sunshine? Well! It didn’t happen on the day a friend and I planned to sell at a car-boot sale - last Sunday. It rained the night before.

Poor onions, growing on in spite of the harsh drying conditions. I'm surprised they haven't fallen down the 'crevases' 

   And my struggling thyme plants - just as  well thyme is happy in dry conditions - up to a point!

I knew before I got up because one of my cats crept into bed beside me in the still-dark hours of morning very wet and muddy – and I had just changed my bedclothes the day before! But, we were brave and set off as planned at 6.30am. It had stopped raining though, it was overcast and that persistent, biting east wind we have had for some time now was blowing straight onto the site we were allocated. We didn’t sell too much, more-or-less covered our costs. We did sell three fleeces – to ourselves! Lol! We packed up and left by 10.00am, chilled to the bone. It was our first experience of car-boot sales – and our last.

However, when I got back from the sale and warmed up, it was back to the plot for a further round of watering. This has become a daily job – dare I say ‘grind’. I spend 2 – 3 hours each day carrying water to seedbeds, my polytunnel and a couple of beds of transplanted brassicas.

The interesting aspects of this are that the earlier transplanted lettuces and Romanesco caulis are doing okay with their daily watering. They even get by without for a day or two. However, those, more recently planted – three weeks ago - have made no progress whatever. My seed beds, especially carrot seedbeds have gradually lost a number of plants which had originally germinated, I’d estimate about 50% loss. I’m guessing to pigeons and possibly slugs – though there are not too many of them this year.

                                                   I managed with heavy watering to erect my bean poles but, how, in ground like this, without rain, do I plant out my beans?

Talking about pigeons – they are struggling now. They, like other birds – robins, blackbirds, sparrows(already a threatened species), dunnocks, wrens - are probably already trying to feed their first chicks of the year but, must be struggling to find food for them and, more importantly – water! For those birds that eat worms and other ground insects, they have no chance of finding a meal as the worms are well underground. I can’t feed birds at home as I have four cats but, I do take food to the plot each day for the birds and have now left tubs of water for them, especially for the little birds that can’t access the tanks. In many ways these conditions are harder for the birds than a harsh winter as they do have their chicks to feed and the usual number of insects is not available.

 

Birds struggling to find food.

This is one of my regulars waiting 

for today's food 






 

For our plot site the cost of water is the biggest item on our annual expenditure as we are on a metered supply. Last year, following a particularly dry May, the water bill exceeded all previous years. Already, at the beginning of May, I can see that we will have a record breaking bill for water.

So far, my Blog has been very negative. There are, of course positives and not just the relative stuff – we are so much better off than commercial growers, for example. Although the dry April has been something of a challenge, the productive year can still be excellent. For crops we need it to rain enough to keep the ground well watered. We also want lots of sunshine in between to encourage the crops to grow. Raining at night-time would be good so that we can enjoy the sunshine during the day and, while we are at it, can we have those conditions for the rest of the year – possibly until December, when we would like a bit of snow for the few days around Christmas. Thank You in anticipation!