I’m a bad parent to my plants :(

Up until last night, I hadn’t been out to my allotment in over a week; in-laws visiting for a wedding, plus attending the wedding and related functions was nice but ate up a lot of time. I had figured that, since we got a good bit of rain on the weekend, the plants would be ok in terms of moisture – to be honest, I was a lot more worried about cold damage!

When I got there, I almost didn’t recognize the plot. Everything was dry as a bone! Most of the plants were in varying degrees of trouble, and it was pretty clear that dehydration was the problem. I guess I didn’t realize just how much of my soil is straight-up clay, and just how much sun we’ve been getting of late. It also didn’t occur to me that because of the location (in what we call a hydro corridor, where they have those big electric towers), it ends up being a bit of a wind tunnel, so surface moisture doesn’t stick around long enough to really soak in.

I gave them all a nice big drink, and put in some bamboo stakes for most of the tomatoes (I underestimated how many I would need).

I’m going out again on Saturday morning, and I’m hoping to add some mulch or something to help keep the moisture in. I’m also hoping that I can nurse my plants back to health; some of them were in REALLY rough shape. If I have time, I’ll add some compost around the base of the plants to try and reduce moisture loss due to evaporation.