Its no use moaning about the wet weather here seeing as the t.v. cameramen and politicians have trickled away from the area now, just a pity they didn't take the rain with them. With a few sunny days last week and the waters on the Somerset levels beginning to recede at last, I continued indoors with some more D.I.Y. mainly clearing out junk from my garage and painting its walls white to brighten the dingy interior. With some more extremely heavy rains overnight on Thursday and Friday and intermittent showers and drizzle in between, my plots are still too wet to achieve any substantial work on them. Saturday was dry, as was this morning, so just before midday I toddled off down to the allotments to pot up various seeds. The drizzly rain started again as I arrived at the allotment gate, I assume just to test my patience further. After donning my wellies and depositing 3 bags of kitchen waste onto my compost heaps, I drained the rusty water from my shed padlocks and unlocked the sheds before tidying up one of my sheds on N2 Plot, so as to give me some extra elbow room to lay out various pots and trays, before adding potting compost to them, (the pots & trays that is, not the elbows).
After potting up several trays full of pots with Runner beans and deciding that open ground would be too wet for any sowing for some time to come, I decided to lift the remaining Carrots from 1 of my raised beds. This raised bed will be covered over with plastic sheeting at my first opportunity and used for more protected seed sowing later. Having finished lifting a reasonable harvest of medium sized and baby Carrots I removed some more of those annual weeds that seem to appear, whatever the weather throws at them, at this time of the year. Using a hand cultivator and working from the grass paths alongside this years potato bed on N2 Plot the majority of weeds were removed within about half an hour or so. By the time I had finished with the weeding even the grass paths were becoming muddy and slippery where I had been walking on them. So even using walking boards across open soil would have been a mistake. At least no sink holes have appeared yet.
Overall the majority of allotments are looking windswept and desolate, with many of them still having various items of gardening equipment strewn around them, after the storms of late. Only 2 or 3 other allotment holders paid short visits to their plots on another dreary, damp afternoon. The lack of bird life was again evident, except for a few Seagulls circling overhead. Probably too rough out over the sea I thought. By 3 p.m. the rain had made a come back so it was time for home. It's 10-30 p.m. now and the heavy rain has just stopped, not for long I fear. I'm listening to the local weather forecast for tonight and tomorrow as I type, more thundery rain overnight and snow tomorrow. Just going to check Google maps to make sure I'm definitely still living in sunny Somerset.
There's Always Tomorrow!!
After potting up several trays full of pots with Runner beans and deciding that open ground would be too wet for any sowing for some time to come, I decided to lift the remaining Carrots from 1 of my raised beds. This raised bed will be covered over with plastic sheeting at my first opportunity and used for more protected seed sowing later. Having finished lifting a reasonable harvest of medium sized and baby Carrots I removed some more of those annual weeds that seem to appear, whatever the weather throws at them, at this time of the year. Using a hand cultivator and working from the grass paths alongside this years potato bed on N2 Plot the majority of weeds were removed within about half an hour or so. By the time I had finished with the weeding even the grass paths were becoming muddy and slippery where I had been walking on them. So even using walking boards across open soil would have been a mistake. At least no sink holes have appeared yet.
Overall the majority of allotments are looking windswept and desolate, with many of them still having various items of gardening equipment strewn around them, after the storms of late. Only 2 or 3 other allotment holders paid short visits to their plots on another dreary, damp afternoon. The lack of bird life was again evident, except for a few Seagulls circling overhead. Probably too rough out over the sea I thought. By 3 p.m. the rain had made a come back so it was time for home. It's 10-30 p.m. now and the heavy rain has just stopped, not for long I fear. I'm listening to the local weather forecast for tonight and tomorrow as I type, more thundery rain overnight and snow tomorrow. Just going to check Google maps to make sure I'm definitely still living in sunny Somerset.
There's Always Tomorrow!!
At least we can sow seeds etc in our garden greenhouse without venturing to the plot
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