Monday 11th July: Oooo it’s set to be a scorcher this week 🥵 Obviously I was up early and outside when it was just light and still cool, but by 8am stood in the sun it was already hot! In these circumstances my day goes something like this: Up with the sunrise and straight out in my PJs to cut flowers, water, observe and do any actual gardening work that I can before it gets too hot, that is usually a 5/6 hr shift before 10am 🤪 Meanwhile inside I have had the windows open all night to let the cool in and then at 10 they get closed and the curtains drawn to attempt to keep the house cool. I spend the day inside only going outside if I really have to and then in the evening once it’s cool enough I am watering until the sun goes down. If I am tired I get a nap in sometime in the afternoon and I am always exhausted when I go to bed 😂 With the temps going up to potential record breaking figures next weekend I am not relishing the week ahead and beyond that apparently. For all you sun worshipers, your ship has come in 🥰 for me and even for gardeners who like the sun the next couple of weeks will be a challenge. Just keeping everything alive let alone flourishing will be a full time job 😝 I have just seen a post about walking dogs in this weather and here are my thoughts, our dogs have the full freedom to come and go from inside to outside, in this weather they chose inside, they will be inside most of the day and evening. I think dog owners are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t so if you have room in your garden for them to walk around and toilet then that’s enough in his heat don’t be worried that the neighbours think you haven’t walked the dog today, it’s kinder not to, or do a midnight stroll instead 🌙
I had a pretty hectic week last week but this week is more sedate thank goodness, I do have a flower order for today but I am not going to cut much else, jam jars can wait a few days. Last night I got John to bring in all the plants I normally have out for sale, it has just got too much to keep them well watered in the sun. They have come in for some tlc, repotting and feeding and are under the shade of a large tree lol.
I have been growing veg etc though I realise I haven’t done much talking about it 🙄 I picked our first cucumber the other day and there are more on the way, the first lot of tomatoes have gone red and the courgettes are coming in thick and fast. Carrots are big enough to pull when needed and the French beans are almost big enough to harvest a good few. The kohlrabi is ready, I just need to harvest that when needed and the onions and garlic are still drying in the greenhouse (actually I ought to move them or they might shrivel up this week. I have peppers on the plants, apples and pears on the trees and raspberries on the bushes to harvest (I haven’t checked the plum trees this year yet) I do have cooking apples this year 😀 After two years without very much at all I think it looks like a bumper crop. I have tayberries, cultivated blackberries and chokeberries to pick once they are fully ripe (we have have a good berry season so far, except blueberries 😏) Oh and I have red cabbage, so although not as much as previous years I don’t think it’s too bad at all. I am planning on rearranging the next lot of beds in the autumn so hopefully they will be easier to manage than they are now. I still have one bd that is incredibly difficult to control (weeds) mostly because we rotavated it yearly way back and made the whole situation worse. Now I use no dig much better for the soil structure and controlling weeds but this patch is on another level, bind weed, stingers, docks, thistles you name it, however the birds are loving it so I guess that is a win as well 🤷♀️😝
Tuesday: A great day weatherwise for me lol. Hot but heavy cloud, that meant I could work outside in my shorts and t-shirt in the heat 😁 because the sun ray couldn’t get through I was fine. Even just walking around in it felt amazingly good, more days like that please rather than blue skies 😂 I spent the morning working outside, from around 5am as I didn’t know if the sun would come out or not, watering and weeding mostly and some cutting back. At lunchtime I went with Shelley to help her buy plants for a new vertical growing wall she is putting up, lots of plants are reduced now as it’s halfway through the season so there were some bargains to be had 🥰 Back home and a little rest before John arrived home, afternoon rounds done, out to collect some shade netting that my brother had picked up for me, an online flower photography workshop and finally off to bed.
Wednesday: Up early again but again the cloud cover was dense for most of the morning and so I got on with plenty of work. Planting up some things in pots that really needed to get in the ground. I am re developing the beds in autumn and was holding off to plant them in situ them but with the impending heatwave I thought it would be better to get them in and move them later in the year. In pots they will dry very quickly in high temps but in the ground they will stand a better chance. That’s where the shade netting is coming in, I also spent the morning cutting lengths and covering various beds plus getting lengths of it up high in the tunnels. Anything I think will struggle I have covered and it’s as much to conserve moisture in the soil as it is to stop the plants wilting. Finally the sun came out but not before I had wandered round to have a look at the top fruit trees to see how they are doing. Plenty of apples this year and again plenty of plums, the pear tree are doing well considering they are only a few years old, I think it will be a bumper crop for fruit this year.
Hilda the hedgehog is doing really well, I have cut back on the amount of milk and upped the amount of cat food, I also gave her some dried mealworms. I need to weigh her sometime this week to make sure she is putting on weight, the amount she eats she really ought to have 😂
It is time to start ordering bulbs for spring flowers and my order has already gone in for most just waiting on the tulip supplier to produce a list. The biennial seeds I sowed have started to come through already, stocks, sweet Williams, honesty and phlox plus I sowed some extra zinnia as the they love the heat and they have come through already too. Seed saving has begun now that some plants are going to seed, poppies, calendula and love in a mist, I am planning on casting them at the very front of the driveway and hope they grow 🤷♀️ if they do it will be very pretty, if they don’t they didn’t cost me anything so nothing lost really. I have also been constantly looking at the flower beds in the front to see where there are gaps and thinking about what needs to be moved. The soil is way to dry to plant anything new at the moment, I did plant some a couple of weeks ago and I have had to water them constantly and shade net them to stop them collapsing in this heat.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday 😂 busy week obviously no time to update the blog page 🤪 Mostly I have been busy in the garden, same as usual, up early getting what I can done before having to retreat inside when the sun comes out. Cutting flowers for bouquets, picking fruit and veg that is ready, watering, watering, watering. Checking out the best way to increase our rain water storage, this week has shown how important it is going forward to try and store as much as possible for when it’s needed most. We have been caught out by that this week as the main water pipe feeding a massive area around us burst and we were left without water from midday Saturday to 7.30 am Sunday morning. You would think that’s not very long and that bottled water would be fine, well yes it is for us in the house for domestic use but for all the animals it suddenly became a threat. The fact that we have had such a hot and dry spell means we have got near to the bottom of our water storage, around 22,000 litres in all 😲 and it has no chance of being topped up by rain. Luckily the duck tank still has some left but the inc tanks are empty and the main storage tanks are still giving me water but not for much longer. So with no indication or updates overnight about the water supply, come 5am in the morning I was beginning to wonder what we do next if it doesn’t come on. Luckily it came back on at 7.30 and hopefully it will stay on but with the heat we are experiencing and the dryness of the ground the pipes are going to contract and possibly it could happen again. Strangely enough on Thursday evening we went shopping and I said to John I think we should stock up on bottled water so we bought 16 litres, I have no idea why I decided to do that but I am glad I did and I think I will stock up on some more 😝 It’s never going to help water the animals all the garden but at least we will have some. The electric also went off sometime over night and that’s the second time this week, I am beginning to think the world has gone to the dogs and we haven’t yet realised it fully.
I have been busy covering the garden beds with shade netting to try and help with the heat that is coming this week, I am hoping that the worst of it misses us or that the forecast is wrong and it’s not as hot as they are saying but they are now saying 41c 🥵 and worse it will be around 33c at night. This is one of the times I am glad it is at least three degrees lower than it is in town.
Hilda the hedgehog is doing really well, very lively now and she weighs 101g so is putting on good weight. I think she would much rather be out in her natural habitat but given the temperatures at the minute it’s probably better that she isn’t. I have been regularly filling up all kinds of bowls and dishes for the birds and other animals including the other hedgehogs we have here making sure everything has access to water.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 