1st - 7th August

Well, the hot month is upon us and therefore it has gone dull and a little wet with promise of more rain over the weekend and into next week. I saw a newspaper headline that said the country was in for a month long soaking. This was taken with a huge pinch of salt due to recent experience of this type of shock and scare weather reporting. Two years ago we had a really hot May, June and July. I remember coming home from work and being washed out simply due to the heat. When we had a dull day I recall coming home and getting so much done and having so much more energy as it wasn’t being sapped by the heat. As August approached the papers carried warnings of even hotter weather for the next month and into August, and it would cause lots of frail and elderly people to die of heat related problems. In actual fact we had a terribly wet month. In the run up to last summer we had a fantastically hot and sunny April and the reports were of more to follow throughout the summer – drought and death would ensue. We then proceeded to have the wettest 3 months for quite some time. During the heat wave 2 years' ago we were told that the unusually hot spell was due to global warming whereas the next year we were told that the usual wet summer was due to global warming. I wish global warming would make up its’ mind! So forgive me if I don’t take too much notice of a headline saying we are in for a near continually wet August. As gardeners, we just have to do what we do and leave the weather to do whatever it will do.

 4^th August
At the allotment I repaired the various holes in the fence which is a must to keep rabbits out before I plant out the leeks. I harvested 5 more courgettes, the equivalent of about 8 in the shops, also an Italian lettuce, as well as a good supermarket bags’ worth of spinach. We had the spinach and lettuce, together with home grown basil in a salad for tea. The evening was more sweet pea cutting and pruning as it is fairly obvious that the stalks are getting shorter. This is because there are too many side shoots that are producing flowers and so the lengths of the flowering stalks get shorter.

 

5^th August

No allotment visit today as it has rained quite a lot. When I got home, I did go out into the garden with the boys as they needed some fresh air, and I perused the sprouting broccoli plants and found a fair few caterpillar eggs and a few caterpillars themselves. The plants are better for them having been removed. The rocket plants in the pots have had a sizeable amount eaten from them, so too have some of the broccoli and the curly kale. Other broccoli plants are doing really well, with decent, well developed leaves.

Onion harvest

 

6^th August
Six more courgettes from the allotment, as well as seeing that 2 more cucumbers are coming along, and I’ve seen a few pumpkins too. Squashes seem to be my speciality. Today was the day I finally got round to planting out the leeks. I gave the ground one more raking, laid out and fastened down the weed suppressing membrane and then cut cross cuts into the fabric every 9 inches in rows 15 inches apart. I dug up the leek seedlings and after making a good, deep hole with the dibber, gently placed the leeks in. You don’t back fill earth into the hole when planting out leeks, you simply water and the water does the rest. Further to my previous estimate, there are, in fact, 36 leeks, better than 29 but not quite 160. I found another onion that I dug up last week but somehow missed. I also planted out 6 rocket plants. A while ago we decommissioned a white laminate covered chipboard bookcase and chest of drawers, and now 2 small drawers from the unit plus the overall rectangle of the bookcase reside in section 2. These are my protective frames for the rocket, and might be a raised bed for carrots next year. With horticultural fleece over them all, and pegged down, they should be safe from attack. Apart from that, it was a quick watering for the cucumbers and a liberal sprinkling of organic slug pellets, then home.

7^th August

Not much gardening today, only a well-overdue mowing of the lawn. There are large areas where the grass has not grown much, but there are some grass clumps that have bolted so we had lots of tall, thin stalks showing, as well as 3 large swathes of clover, so it was good to give it an army haircut – short and uniform all over. It looks so much neater now. It is also neater due to the fact that when I mow the lawn I have to remove and tidy up all manner of toys and scooters and ride on-diggers and the like. The 2 mower boxes full of clippings that were produced were put into the second compost bin and mixed in equal measure to some shredded paper I had from work. This now completes the bin and I will let that rot down whilst I go back to using the first bin. I put a few handfuls from the second bin into the first as this is good accelerator, as well as containing a large number of special tiger worms, who, unlike earth worms, are the sort that really love eating compost material and breaking it down for the bacteria to get a hold of. It is the bacteria that really do the composting. Most of the compost in the second bin was pretty well rotted anyway, but I put in this last load of grass to add a little more volume. I won’t be using it until autumn so there is no rush.

Next post: 18th August