Topic: It never rains but .......?

[petefj]

As it was a dry morning yesterday I had an early lunch and went up to the allotment.  Literally, just as I opened  up the little gate to go into my plot it started to rain.  I managed to cut back the Autumnal fruiting raspberry canes, pulled some leeks and some sprouts, and that was it.
Is this lot ever going to stop?  I haven't been able to do any real work on the allotment since October.  Here in Cornwall we've had almost non-stop rain since then.
God help us, what a year this could be!

Peter

[pumkinlover]

Glad to hear that you do not mention floods petefg.

[Paulines7]

We are in the same boat here and everything is saturated, day in day out.   Fortunately, we are on the side of a hill so haven't been flooded.  Further down in our village there are new springs that have appeared in the hillside and are running through some of the houses.   

Despite the slope, our vegetable plots still have pools of water in them.  It should all dry out once the rain stops but I wonder how many nutrients have been washed away.  I don't normally bother with adding anything to the soil as the chickens have free run on the plots during the winter and add plenty of manure.  This year though, I feel I will have to add something. 

When will this rain stop?  It seems only a few years back that we were told that because of global warming we should grow succulents and other plants in our beds and borders that didn't require much water.  Gardener's World and other similar programmes devoted a lot of time showing us which plants we should buy.  Maybe they should have advised us to grow rice!   

[bionear2]

I think that his summer (if we get one) will show up the same problem that the last prolonged deluge caused. Folk were coming into our allotment shop, and complaining that their young plants had stopped growing.
Thinking about washed-out soil, we advised regular dressings of Growmore or some other such soluble fertiliser, and top dressing with something slower. An article I later read confirmed the problem, but also added that without sufficient sunshine, the plants also suffered from lack of photosynthesis.