I DON’T FEEL so bad about the lacklustre performance of the vegetables in our garden when I hear that farmers and growers are having exactly the same problems; cool, waterlogged soils and, even for those growing under glass, low levels of light. Supermarkets are having to order vegetables from abroad to make up for the lack of homegrown product.
But whatever the weather there’s going to be some vegetable that finds the weather suits it. Our leeks and onions which would have suffered in a drought are doing reasonably well but our beans and courgettes are taking their time to get established. Hopefully they’ll catch up as the season progresses.
Ironically this year I decided to try installing a watering system for the greenhouse so that when we go away our neighbour won’t need to come around to water. I didn’t manage to set it up, being short of a particular type of hose connector but, as it happened, I wouldn’t have needed it as when we were away in the Lake District last week the sun probably appeared for only a few hours during the whole 5 day period then the day after we returned their was a month’s worth of rain in a day.
The sunken path in the greenhouse filled up with water and the watering cans ended up floating around. Even the raised bed which the buckets of tomatoes stand on was an inch or two deep in water.