Mixed Emotions, El Niño & Drought

What is El Niño? And why is it affecting us? The Pacific Ocean is the largest area of water on the planet - El Niño is the name given to the warm phase of a cycle where a huge area of water warms up and powers the weather around the world. I reckon that's what's causing the dry spell.

Whilst the weather is great at the moment, it does cause problems. The very dry conditions makes planting every week a lot harder and nerve-wracking! Throughout May, June & July the ideal is to have a good shower of rain once per week and 23°C in the daytime & 12°C at night time.

My emotions were a bit sad this morning as my last sowing of carrots is not looking too good - the tiny little seedlings just do not have enough moisture to grow so about 50% have come up. Hopefully the rest will come up with a shower of rain at the weekend. So if you could order me some rain it would help a lot.

The carrots that I sowed in February are amazing and we have been picking them for 3 weeks now. All of the other crops look pretty good too. It's just a battle of keeping the weeds to a manageable level.

One of the reasons for getting the land at Great Budworth next to the lake was so we could use the water for irrigation. It's a huge effort and requires a lot of resources; it would be a last resort. So in the meantime we will use all the tools and tricks we can to conserve as much moisture as possible.