Summer 2026

It’s mid-June now, which signals the start of summer. The panic and frantic rush to get as much done in spring as possible is over and what was missed, was missed. We’ve had a pretty wet June thus far, my rain gauge had recorded a total of 60 mm of rain by the 15th. In previous years we’ve suffered pretty bad drought by June. In June 2025 we recorded 41 mm (for the whole month!), and in June 2024 just 23 mm. This is great for the plants (and for the weeds) and hopefully for the reservoirs which have been very low the last couple of summers leading to protracted hose pipe bans. The summer 2025 hosepipe ban was only lifted in February this year.

We gave away many plants (mostly chillies) at the June plant swap at the allotment which has freed up much-needed space in the greenhouse at home.

We have also been up to some friends in the North of England who have been hard at work landscaping one half of their garden. They live on very heavy clay soil, so have dug down a bit, but mostly put good quality topsoil and manure on top in generous mounds to help with drainage. Hopefully with regular application of manure and some help from the worms, the clay will eventually break down into something a little less unkind. I gave them some planting ideas and helped plant out the new borders. It’ll take a season or two to grow in, but they should be left with a reasonably low-maintenance mix of cottage garden favourites: roses, Salvia, Nepeta, Eryngium, dogwood, lavender, Rudbeckia, foxgloves, honesty, Heuchera, and an Acer. I am very excited to hear how it all grows through the summer and into next spring.

What was wet is now very, very dry

Following the very wet June we saw no rain at all for weeks on end. It was an extremely dry summer which scorched the garden, killed the grass, and I’m quite worried about the poor dogwood which doesn’t seem to have fared well. It made growing and gardening very hard this year. The Salvias coped quite well, so did the sunflowers. Most of the veg up the allotment really suffered, even with heavy watering. The dahlia’s did so-so, I probably planted them too close to other things (again…). The potatoes got scab, and the allotment tomatoes got cooked on the vine. Every tomato had pretty bad blossom-end-rot from the lack of consistent watering and the intense water stress. I also got a bit disheartened at some point after a work trip and left things a little too long. All very punishing.

Then there was the heat. We tried our best to get up to the allotment to do useful things, but the heat was intense. One morning we went up at 06:00, a very early start for us, but by 08:00 it was already in the 30˚s with the sun beating down on the plot. By 10:30 it was in the high 30˚s, and we had to stop. This heat persisted day after day, night after night, through all of July and August.

El Niño is meant to be happening next year which apparently means we’re set for an even more brutal summer next year. The automatic irrigation in the greenhouse was a pain to set up but clearly saved our bacon chillies/tomatoes – so we may have to expand on that for outdoors and in borders. I worry we’ll be doomed without it.

Allotment Summer Show

We did quite well in the allotment summer show this year! It’s been a very tough year with the drought, but our onions and our chilli jam got first place. Our potatoes came 2nd, and our berries 3rd. We likely could have done better with the berries if we’d thought about it and not just snacked on them whenever we were up the allotment. We had a summer BBQ with some friends the following weekend and shamelessly showed off our prizes (and shared some of our produce at the same time). Not the most productive year, but certainly more variety than last year and slightly more competently done.

We’re beginning to learn.

Greenhouse

It absolutely thrummed with chillies this year. Almost overwhelmingly so. We harvested kilos of them, and the fridge is still full many weeks later even after making 4lbs of jam. We did try growing melons, and it looks like we’ll get one or two, but our strategy wasn’t the best – we had 4 plants in one hanging basket, which is just too much competition. It is fun to grow melons though, so we’ll try again and be a bit less hap-hazard about it next year.

Space to breath?

The first part of the summer was so promising after our panicked but fairly productive spring. But then the drought. I suppose having space to breath is not really part of the hobby. Gardening is unpredictable as you work with the cards you’re dealt by pests, the weather, your choice of plants, etc. It would be a boring if it were predictable, I suppose…