Any farmer, homesteader, or gardener will talk at length about the weather at any given opportunity. And as you have no doubt noticed over the years, I fit the stereotype to the T. Today, I will not so much talk as whine. Sorry about that, I need to get this off my chest.

We had a drought in the spring, which seems to be the rule these last few years. We did finally get some rain in July, which made me a bit optimistic. The soil got a nice soak, and whilst the underground waters are still below average, they are no longer “extremely below average” nor “strongly below average” – just “mildly below average”.

Unfortunately, unlike the previous year, the rain did come with a significant drop in temperature as well. The previous year, we had these average temperatures – June 17°C, July 19°C, and I was complaining that the summer was cold. This year – June 17°C, July 16°C. Even worse.

This difference is not significant when it comes to clothing or heating, but it is huge when it comes to some plants. Two-thirds of July we had daytime temperatures below 20°C, and on some days we even had night temperatures below 10°C. That has led to the near failure of some crops – Hokkaido pumpkin, butternut squash, and corn. All pumpkins, melons, and cucumbers need temperatures above 20°C at least part of the day in order to grow, and this year they just did not have that at my location.

Butternuts still did not produce a single female flower, and their growth is stunted. The Hokkaido stopped producing female flowers and started dropping female buds before they even opened. And the few fruits that were on the vines already are stuck at apple size for weeks now. It is very unlikely now that I will get more than one very small fruit per plant for Hokkaido, and almost impossible to get any ripe fruit for the butternut – the expected growing season is not long enough anymore.

A lot of the corn is also still stunted and did not produce any flowers. Some did finally produce female flowers, but not very many, and small plants will produce small ears.

All in all, I can already say that the Three sisters experiments did mostly fail, but not due to anything that I have done; just the weather was crap.

And the garlic continued to rot, not to dry, even under a roof. I might end up with less garlic (in weight) than I planted. It is already the case for some variants (Rusinka and Havel)

At least not all is bad. Cold, wet weather is still better than a hot drought. So to end today on a high-ish note:

It was really good for raspberries; we have enough jam and juice for at least two years.

The pea harvest was acceptable – the damage it suffered was from voles, not the weather.

Runner beans are thriving, and I might get a big harvest. They liked the weather so much that they are now dangling the vines several dm above the support tops. At the end of August, I will start harvesting green bean pods from the tops of the vines, so the bottom ones ripen faster. I will likely be able to can enough bean pods to last for years.

Apples, pears, plums, and aronias continue to grow and ripen; they look extremely promising. I hope to be able to fill the cellar with rows and rows of jars with dehydrated fruit and jams.

Walnut branches are so burdened with nuts that I have to bend to walk under them, despite cutting all low-hanging branches just two years ago.

Two of the three potato variants did recover somewhat – Marabel and Deli. I might get a decent harvest there. The Esme seems to be the most susceptible to drought; it did not bounce back, and the harvest will probably be tiny.

Tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse continued to grow and produce fruit, albeit at a slower pace. Today, the first tomato started to blush. Thus, I might get the harvest with just a small delay compared to previous years. And unlike previous years, the tomatoes outdoors have not succumbed to blight yet. Maybe the improvised rain shelter did actually help, although it is still too soon to be definitive about that particular issue.

I harvested all the onions – I will write in detail about that some other time – and the harvest was acceptable, albeit not spectacular. In their place, I already sown a second batch of spinach and peas. We shall see how that goes.