We caught the edge of rain showers twice in August, receiving just 2mm of rain each time so no respite from irrigating the newly sown crops yet! We transplanted radicchio, chard, kale and spinach in August, which all needed irrigating with trickle tape to get them established and just have 9 trays of lettuce left to be planted outside now. We have even started to irrigate our carrots and parsnips with drip tape so they can grow a bit bigger, first time we’ve ever irrigated parsnips at this stage and very rare that we’ve irrigated carrots once growing too. The squash yields are down this year (maybe as much as 50%), but they are very tasty and sweet which means they should store well for use in the Winter. Our sweetcorn harvest started a couple of weeks earlier than usual and our second sweetcorn variety are smaller than usual and only 1 cob per plant, when often there would be 2.
Drought resistant varieties
One of our customers is friends with the person who runs the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, which includes many drought resistant varieties of vegetables, some of these may well be varieties we’ll be growing in the UK in the future! More info in this interesting article https://dark-mountain.net/seeds-of-baal/
The Ripple Farm watering hole. We’ve had regular visits from a hedgehog to our pond for the first time, which is great to see and a buzzard has been pictured regularly too. No more sightings of the lone turtle dove in August though so hopefully it’s safely migrated and will return next year and find a mate.
