I realise I’ve not seemed so enthusiastic this year about my gardening, which honestly couldn’t be further from the truth in one sense, after last year I learnt so much about growing, what we could grow and planned so much for the garden this year. However, for anyone not in the UK and possibly isn’t aware, we’ve spent most of the summer drenched in rain. Luckily we’ve not suffered the floods that a lot of the UK suffered with, but we’ve still had our fair share of rain. I think our summer came and went in May 
So far this summer the reaping from the garden has been low and slow. Raspberries are growing and ripening slowly but seemed to start earlier than last year. However they’re always damp from the rain so I’m losing more to mould. We’ve got a few peppers on the pepper plant, looking better than last years attempt, maybe they like lots of water?! The chilli plants vary. The ones in pots seem quite big and strong however despite plenty of flowers I’ve not seen a single chilli yet. The ones in the ground also vary, some have grown stronger in the ground and the flowers are starting to appear more, others just seem to be hanging in there with no improvement. However some were planted in areas to test how well they would grow, I guess this answers my question! Our little chilli garden doesn’t seem to be doing much either. This was specifically dug for chilli plants, but due to the lack of sun the plants are just not happy at all. When the sun came out briefly a couple of weeks ago, some of the plants woke up and grew new green leaves (the others were yellowing) and new flowers, but I don’t know how long they’ll last. I’m quite tempted to bring a couple of pots indoors and see if the warmth will help the fruit start to show. Our patio doors face south so if the sun does come out the plants could get the sun but benefit from the warmth in the house. I’d just need a decent, non leaking tray to stand them in.
Our salad has been pretty slow. The spring onions have been growing for weeks, months now. They’re still not a decent size, but they are getting there slowly. I’m managing to pick a couple of radish now and then, but the lettuce doesn’t really want to grow without decent sun either. Annoyly, I plant some seeds or seedlings and because they’re taking so long to grow to a reasonable strength, the snails and slugs are getting to them first and today I noticed a few seedlings eaten.
The main sufferer of this bad weather however has been my tomatoes. They’ve all suffered from blight due to the amount of rain. All of my tomatoes are grown in grow bags and clearly too much rain is getting in and just drenching the roots. There are some holes in the bottom of them but I guess it’s just not getting to drain away. I first noticed one of my beef tomato plants looked pretty sorry for itself and had virtually died when we had been away for a few weeks. Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed that a couple of tomatos had fallen off another plant and they were green with brown patches. I started to realise that the dried out leaves at the bottom of the plant weren’t the normal dried out leaves that you just remove out the way, but they had died unnaturally. After a call to my Dad, and describing everything he concluded it was blight as his out plants, outdoors, were suffering from the same problem.
How to deal with blight? Well first off, make sure you have it! If your leaves start to go yellow/brown and usually the brown or yellow spots start in the middle of the leave and works its way outwards, the main stork of the plant can have brown/black patches, or the tomatoes have brown patches and fall off easily, even though they’re not ready, then most likely you have Blight. Blight is usually a magnesium deficiency. If you know the ground is deficient then you can get powder from a garden centre to dig into the ground. However, because my plants are in grow bags I had to dissolve some powder into a spray/mister and simply spray it over the leaves and stork, and hope for the best. Ideally do this once a week. Because of the rain I’ve only done this once however the tomatoes do seem to be pulling through now. I’ve only had to remove one bad tomato since. I also cut off all the bad leaves and tomatos to try and remove as much of the trace of it as I could. I went out today and picked a few tomatos off the plant, unfortunately a lot have split badly due to the amount of water the roots are taking up. However the tomatoes are looking much healthier and once it stops raining I’ll be getting some more magnesium spray on them.
So yes, the rain has damaged or prevented a lot of plants from just not growing properly. We really haven’t had a proper summer this year. This is the time when I dream of having a greenhouse or, even better, a polytunnel!
