Make sure your garden survives the worst of the summer rain
Even by the UK’s standards of unpredictability, it has been a disappointing summer for most people who buy seeds online from Seeds By Post (http://www.seedsbypost.co.uk). With the Met Office confirming that the month of June was the wettest for more than a century and July also proving to be very wet, those gardeners that might have been planning for drought conditions have instead found themselves dealing with the exact opposite.
The news might not be so surprising for many of our mail order seeds customers, given how wet the last few British summers have been – not to mention the role of global warming in causing all manner of drastic weather conditions. Still, the extreme rainfall of recent weeks and months has been no fun for many of the UK’s gardeners, who have increasingly woke up to rose beds strewn with petals, buds rotting in their stems, saturated soil and an abundance of slugs and weeds.
Certainly, slugs and snails are the few examples of wildlife that actually seem to thrive in these conditions, which is why it is such a good idea to take a look around the garden in the evening and move slugs somewhere else, or even make slug traps out of upturned garden planters. Also remember to leave plenty of easily accessible food on the bird table for the garden birds that often struggle to find it in downpours. You may have to admit defeat on some of those weeds, however – at least until next year.
Admittedly, flower seeds can present particular problems in such wet conditions, and there isn’t much that you can do about budded blooms rotting off before they even have the chance to open – except deadheading the rotted ones and feeding well so that you might get better second blooms when the weather improves. You might want to move tender annuals to the greenhouse for a while so that delicate flowers do not rot off, as well as ensuring that there is adequate drainage for patio containers so that they do not become waterlogged.
You might have better luck with herbaceous plants, which can actually benefit from wetter weather. As for vegetable seeds, the combination of excess rain, cool temperatures and little sunshine often means slow growth at best. However, you may still be able to achieve a good harvest with the help of well-drained soil. Choose a dry day for digging up your potatoes, which will also need to be allowed to dry before storage. Some crops, like chilli plants, are easy to grow under glass, so it might be best to concentrate on these in bad weather.
Remember to stay positive about your garden during the adverse weather and purchase cheap seeds from the experts at http://www.seedsbypost.co.uk!
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