June 19th

I will start again with, another week of great weather.

This week almost every afternoon we had temperatures hitting 30.

And still no rain, well we had a wee bit on Sunday morning, but the ground dried out almost instantly.

All the brassicas, leeks, onions, and turnips are looking great.

But we have no sign of any Beetroot or carrot seed coming through.

Hopefully with next weeks forecast of rain actually comes to something,

It looks like we have possibly lost all our Courgettes, squash and pumpkin plants.

I am going to leave the fleece on until the end of next week, before I have a proper look.

But it is looking very doubtful.

These plants cannot take months of no rain plus the extra warm temperatures we have been having, so I think it has come to a time we take the three rolls of brand-new fleece of, and at least save that, from any winds that might come and rip it.

This week I got the cucumbers and chillies planted.

On Wednesday I started planting the 250 cucumbers, and it was really hot.

I had started first thing, but by 12 o’clock the thermometer was sitting well above the max 50-degree mark, I have been planting cucumbers for over 20 years and in very hot tunnels, but this time I got up to get another 20 plants to finish the row, and I was dizzy and stumbling around, so I finished the row and stumbled outside, to outside temperature of 30.

That is the first time ever, the heat has felt like that.

I then soaked the tunnel for 30 minutes.

Finally finishing it of on Thursday, on a cooler outside temp of 26, the temp gauge in the tunnel was still above the max 50 mark but was not as hot.

But the cucumbers from the day before were looking a bit sorry for themselves.

We had to replace 30 which had obviously died from heat stroke.

The weather has been really good and warm for weeks now, but we do need some rain.

And time will tell but I think we will have lost most if not all of the 20 thousand squash plants, fingers crossed the carrots and beetroot come through,

As we are approaching holiday times, could we just ask where possible that you let us know as soon as you can for any holiday dates, it is just that for the first time in 10 years Jacqui is having a week off on the 1st week of July, now Audrey and David are still here, so all as normal, but just to help it would be good to know in advance.