Mid June
and it’s chilly for June!
I have always had a particular view of what to expect from the
months and the different seasons. As I was growing up, there were lots of
sayings about the different months, for example ‘March comes in like a lion and
goes out like a lamb’, ‘a wet and windy May fills the barns with corn and hay,’
‘April showers’. However, there is a
general expectation that each season will ‘do’ what is expected in most years.
Particularly in the British Isles, we do expect cold [ish] wet weather of varying
degrees in winter. We expect it to become gradually warmer though, still wet [ish]
in the spring, gradually becoming warmer still and a bit drier through May,
June and July. Although August is supposed to be the real summer month, I have
rarely known it to be hot and dry. It always seems that the best weather
happens when children are stuck in school taking exams then, when they are on
holiday from late July, it starts to rain.
Over the last three years here, in south west England, the
weather has been so abnormal that I’m beginning to wonder if there is really a ‘normal’.
We have had two unusually, extremely cold winters and, for
three winters in a row, I have not been able to supply myself with vegetables
throughout that season – even leeks, of which I had a good supply, were frozen
into the ground. Last year and this, we have had very hot early spring times
which have made it difficult to establish crops as the ground was so hard and
dry – this year as early as March [I actually got sunburnt!]. Since then,
barring a couple of short, very dry but still quite cool weeks between the end
of April and the beginning of May, it was so dry and windy that the ground
dried out, becoming unworkable very quickly, even the weeds were struggling.
For the rest of the spring and early summer season, it has remained cold, wet
and windy.
Many plants are suffering or even being destroyed by a mixture
of bird, ant, flea-beetle and slug attack, and destruction from high winds.
Plants are growing so slowly that they are gradually being eaten away by all of
these problems before they get to the harvesting stage. On visiting my son's allotment, I noticed he has ant traps in his greenhouse. When I quizzed him about them, he told me he had introduced them succesfully to his house when invaded by ants and was now trying to ensure they didn't cause problems in his green house. The ants [it takes only a few, to visit the traps and take the poison back to the queen and the nest, wiping out the whole colony] have been particularly destructive this year on my alloptment and I have bought a couple of pre-baited traps [how organic is that? not at all but I am at my wits end on trying to eradicate these very destructive and vicious red ants from my poly tunnel]. I will let you know how it works - or not!
So far, this season, I’ve managed to harvest a fairly steady
supply of broad beans and early potatoes. I have stopped harvesting asparagus
though my globe artichokes are just starting [those which have not been broken
off by the high winds]. Don't forget to check for those very destructive asparagus beetles [see a previous Blog for information] so far, this year, I have only seen two beetles. But, of course, on an allotment, they will be all around us.
I’m hopeful that I will be harvesting peas in a couple
of weeks. My first crop will be Marvel and my intention is to wait until most
of the crop is ready then harvest and freeze for the winter. The wind has
knocked a lot of the vines over but, I am hopeful it won’t have done too much
damage. My second crop – Hurst Green Shaft – is surrounded by a boma [an
enclosure created by canes and fleece to keep birds out and the wind from
knocking them down]. They might be ready in a month’s time, GW! Strawberries
are ripening very slowly and birds [I suspect blackbirds] are eating them as
they do. Raspberries are also beginning to ripen – my son and I picked a small
punnet of them a couple of days ago.
Fruit has been particularly hard hit this year. There is a
very poor set on most fruit trees. Perhaps some of the later flowering apple
trees have fared better as they flowered when the rain stopped. No doubt this
is a result of the bees being unable to fly out during the long wet month of
April. This must surely have affected the development of the bee colonies.
For many of my crops, because I have the time to do it and
because I have the enthusiasm in the growing, as much as the eating of the
crops, I have re-sown, sometimes twice, [several varieties of beans and
coriander] to try to ensure a harvest. A few weeks ago, after a poor start, I
ended up with so many squash and pumpkin plants, I was giving them away to my
neighbours. Now, I find that the high winds have broken off the best and most
advanced ones and slugs have eaten away the smaller ones. Maybe I won't have so many after all.
This has been a very whinging Blog, my apologies. Usually I
try to reinforce my strongly held view that each year is difficult for some
things but will be brilliant for others. Mostly, I am trying to express
understanding for all those growers who are also experiencing difficulties, it
happens to the best of us. It has also made me wonder what a ‘normal’ year is.
Can we depend on there being such an event? As for the storms we have been
experiencing – as I remember, as a child, that we had storms during many Junes,
when my father would lose his much beloved boat – driven up onto rocks on the
shore. This happened on at least three occasions[that I remember] and at least
three boats were written off but, I guess, in the course of 15 years or so,
this was not too unreasonable, just memorable when it happened.
As I glance out of my window, I see that the rain has stopped
and there are actually some visible patches of blue sky between the scudding
clouds. My barometer is low and not moving up but, when I tap it gently,
neither does it dip lower. Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day. I have plans!
