This summer has been sodden so far. What started as a drought after a dry winter has become a lush weed fest. Its fascinating to see that in a dry summer you get completely different weeds from a wet one. Seeded poppies are sprouting where there were none before. You have to admire the opportunism of weeds who bide their time for the conditions to be just right. In a dry summer we get a lot of deep tap rooted weeds like dandelions that can take advantage of the lack of competition from more drought prone weeds. The damp crumbly soil does make weeding easy and if you can get the weeds out before they form seeds you can soon make a nice rich pile of compost heat accelerant that twins very nicely with the chicken poo and straw from the chicken house.
Likewise the vegetable patch has its winners and losers. My potatoes, kale, broccoli and leaf crops are all having a whale of a time. I cant wait to dig up the rest of the potatoes; the ones I’ve already pulled up look fantastic. My soft fruit are doing really well (raspberries, loganberries etc) as well as the apples but the plums and apricots are just empty. The warm early spring made them blossom so soon there were no bees to pollinate. No bees = no fruit. That greengage jam will just have to wait til next year.
The motto or lesson here is that if you have a diverse plot there will always be something that will take advantage of the prevailing conditions. You can make either work in your favour.
