Drought

East Yorkshire is now officially in drought. It's certainly not a surprise to me, there has been low rainfall for about two years. The only surprise to me is that it took so long for the authorities to realise. We have no hosepipe ban announced yet, largely thanks to the work Yorkshire Water did in the mid nineties to connect the drier east to the wetter west with pipelines.

On the plus side the warm, bright start to the spring has helped things power on, but only if they get water. Our broad beans look great, the parsnips and onions are in the ground and sucking up as much water as we can give them. The asparagus is producing spears, in a few days we might be able to take our first ones. The gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes are bursting into leaf and the flowers are out on the gooseberries which are attracting bees to pollinate them. The much damaged raspberry canes are beginning to produce new growth. I fear we won't see much in the way of fruit this year because the canes were eaten by the local rabbits and the canes that should produce fruit this year are badly damaged or completely gone. We will see how the canes respond.

I have dug out some of the compost from the oldest bin and it is lovely stuff. We will use it as a mulch for the fruit bushes to suppress weeds, retain moisture and nourish the bushes. There is still more to come out then I'll turn the other bin into the empty one and make room for this year's stuff to rot down. In digging out the bin I found a couple of pieces of rhubarb that we dug out over a year ago. They were both sprouting, so we gave them away to our newest plot holder. 

The site is generally looking with most plots getting started for the new season.