26/7/26 - Breaking Records The Hot Way
Good morning lovely diary reader, and welcome to my latest instalment of my allotment dairies. It's been a few weeks since I last troubled the internet with my perceptions on allotment gardening, so I thought it was time for an update. In truth, there hasn't been much to update. It's barely rained for months and the time since it did last rain has seen records broken up and down the country. Highest temperature for June and July, longest stretch of days over 30 degrees and driest periods of time are records that have all fallen, to name but a few. What does that mean for the allotment? Well, let's take a look.
Watering
The first thing that springs to most peoples minds is watering. I can't lie, it's been a struggle. Every day, there is watering to do in one shape or form. At first, I was watering the whole plot every day, but after a couple of weeks, it was just becoming too impractical both from a time point of view, and the effort it takes to carry water over to my plots from the nearest source. But I've got settled into more of a rhythm where certain things are only getting watered each day. Things like water melons, cucumbers, beans, new plantings with shallow root systems get watered every day, but the plants that have deeper roots and are larger plants, are now getting watered every other day, or sometimes every 3rd day. So this includes things like squash, tomatoes, parsnip and potatoes. This is still taking up a lot of time each day, and the water stored in the IBC tank over the winter has long still run out, so it's been out with the wheelbarrow and watering cans to transport 40 litres of water a time. One thing that hasn't been lost on me though is the irony that much of this seems to have started when I installed the water harvesting system on the polytunnel. Since then, there has been little to no rain!
Ripening
The squash also seems to be reacting really well. There are plenty of fruits on the plants, and the uchiki kuri are coming out in their strong orange colour. Size wise, they don't seem to be too big, but I don't know if this is down to watering, temperature or it just being one of those years. The butternut plants are pushing out fruit left right and centre and if that continues, it looks like we should get a good squash harvest this season.
But there are also slightly negative impacts on ripening. The tomato plants both inside the polytunnel, and those outside are relatively well laden with fruit. But they are all green. This year, we are growing two beefsteak varieties, so we're not necessarily looking for dozens of fruit off each plant. Compared to last year, the heat seems to of knocked back the size of each tomato as well. In the last week, I did hear an interesting comment about tomatoes, and that is that they will always struggle to ripen in constantly hot temperatures (over 30 degrees). Hopefully, when this hot period does ease back again, they will start to ripen off. We are in a lull of a few days where maximum temperatures are around 25 degrees, but the forecast is for them to return to the low 30's in the coming few days.
Yield
For some produce, yield is looking down on previous years. I don't weigh each harvest, but I do get a feeling for things as we go through harvesting and I can look back on my comments in the diary from previous years. Our onion yield for this year is down as already mentioned in recent posts. But I have now trimmed down what onions we did harvest, and it's safe to safe that the bulbs themselves are smaller that past years, and the numbers suitable for storage are also much lower. I expect we will also lose a lot more in the coming weeks as many of the onions aren't suitable for longer term storage. They are already beginning to feel soft to the touch.
Main crop potatoes in the ground have also struggled in the heat and while I haven't started to harvest them yet (they aren't due to he harvested for another couple of weeks) the plants started dying back quite soon on and without the growth on top, I wouldn't be surprised if the size and number of tubers is also affected.
A surprise has also been our carrot harvest. Readers of these allotment diaries will know that I am a big advocate for growing carrots in a bath! It's the ideal receptacle to grow in. However, after a great start with germination and early stage growth, the heat has just utterly seen of the green growth. No amount of watering has been able to retain the growth. And like the potatoes, with no green growth on top, the roots have suffered. We are harvesting them, but they are significantly smaller than previous years, and there is also a significant difference in taste. I'm still going to harvest the carrots that are there, leaving them in the soil until we are ready for them, but I think quality will be well down. In addition to that, an ants nest has also taken up residence in the bath tub too and while they don't seem to be affecting the carrots themselves which have already stopped growing, it makes harvesting annoying! So, with the bath tub seemingly now being out of bounds for the remainder of the year, a new sowing has gone into the polytunnel carrot bed. Aware that the temperatures in the tunnel have been frequently reaching above 50 degrees, I wasn't expecting much, but you've got to try, right? Germination has been OK though, and growth has started well. Perhaps being out of direct sunlight is helping them, maybe?
Plantings
Despite the hot weather, follow up plantings have been taking place. Gaps in my planning and sowing management have meant that once again the local nursery have come to the rescue and I have picked up some red cabbage plants. They have gone into the ground and are being kept under environmesh. The plants have taken well, planted with plenty of lime and fresh compost. Something is till having a nibble on the leaves, but it seems to not be affecting growth.
We've also harvested all our lettuce. A couple of months ago, someone kindly left some lettuce plug plants on our sharing bench, which I took and planted into some spare space in the polytunnel. They did well, and we now only have one of those left to harvest. I have tried several times this year to grow my own lettuce plugs, but though germination has been great, they have really been attacked by bugs. Last weekend, we went to the nursery and picked up 18 cells of lettuce plants. What I hadn't realised was that each cell had 3 plug plants in it! Doh! So now we have around 42 lettuce plants squeezed in all over the place and doing well. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, we will be able to start picking from those. In the same trip to the nursery, I also picked up some beetroot plants. Our beetroot harvest this year has been really good. We've been picking them as we've needed them and rather than trying to preserve as much as possible, we've been enjoying them fresh. There are still a dozen or so in the polytunnel that are ready for harvest, but adding a few more bunches should see us through until the colder weather returns in the autumn.