I like where I garden. The soil is rich and deep,the ground is on the whole not prone to flooding, and we are not too concerned with pests, except those greedy wood pigeons that eat your cabbages and cauliflowers, but nets can stop them. However, I have said before that I garden in a wind tunnel, as the wind funnels between rows of houses to rush over my unsheltered spot. I am not high up, only seventy feet above sea level, but there is no protection. So how do gardeners cope with wind?
Well, ensure that your structures are well fastened together, fastened to the ground and safe. You also need to keep up regular maintenance. The greenhouse is a case in point. I had no defence against a mini vortex that took out some panes recently, but the frame held well. Why did it hold? I have it bolted down onto paving slabs and I reinforce it with pink grip cement, which is a powerful bonding agent, and I used several tubes of it.
You need to ensure that the frames are well fitted into place, so that none can be rattled by a strong wind. There is also a good case for allowing wind an escape route. If you think that is going to get in, allow it a way out, for otherwise it will blow its way out of the confined structure.
Poly-tunnels can be something of a lottery. I have seen some that stand up well against wind, but the cheaper, portable variety does not. I had one that was damaged by a storm,so I decided to fasten it down, lashing it to anchors with stout fastenings. The fastenings, though were too strong, stronger than the light metal frame, so they stayed firm, but the frame buckled. I had not factored that into the calculation. With hindsight,my conclusion is that temporary structures might be safer being taken down in Winter.
You might think of wind breaks. Surprisingly, solid walls are not the best defences against wind, which is why walled gardens like Heligan used to have shelter belts of trees outside the walls. While a wall gives protection for a distance up to ten times its height,the wind is deflected upwards by the walls and then becomes turbulent, which can cause some damage at times,particularly to roofs or tall trees. The ideal protection is a permeable barrier that allows some wind through but slows it. This can be a mesh fence or a hedge. Fences of fine mesh slow wind down to forty per cent of its speed and therefore, as damage is caused by the fastest winds, they prevent much damage. Some of my fellow plotholders surround their greenhouses with mesh or mats for about half the greenhouse height to prevent damage.
But thick hedges,maybe of privet,can be a great defence. These do not need to be high, in fact there can be lines of small hedges built at intervals through the garden, sometimes surrounding larger beds. Box is a great shrub for this purpose, but there is a bit of a problem that even hit Longmeadow,the garden tended by the renowned gardener and tv presenter Monty Don. The disease is box blight, a fungal disease that is invariably fatal and which results in the plant having to be pulled up and burned.
Comments
Vermiculite is well-known for retaining and slowly releasing water, though I don't really need it at the moment. I last used it a long time ago.
That your egg plants burned is astounding, for they are warm weather plants. Where I am, an egg plant is unlikely to burn, so you certainly garden in climes warmer than I do. We rarely reach the upper nineties. Today I tolerated the gusting wind and not very warm temperature, but went home when the rain started. But that's England!
Frank, you covered much here. This is important to anyone who gardens. I have had problems with heat causing eggplants to burn. It really gets hot here, and upper 90s is quite common. As for drought watering helps, but have you tried vermiculite? It is supposed to hold water. Years ago I bought a bag for my very small garden. Did it help? Our humidity is so high here I do not really know, but I did better with it than when I did not buy any. It traps and slowly releases water or so was the claim. I learned about it from a tv gardening show, but it is not well known.
As I travel across the flattest part of the Fens there are points on the route when you can see no hills on the horizon, it is so flat. That's strange to one who comes from Northern England, where there are often hills on the near horizon. But you can see why shelter is needed there.
My train route to Cambridge takes me across The Ouse Washes, between the towns of March and Ely, where in Winter the land is allowed to flood to prevent flooding in the nearby towns.The train runs on a raised embankment and you see flooded land on both sides. You feel as if raw nature is very close to you.
Gardening in that region has advantages, as the soil is good and the climate is in Summer warm, but it can be cold in Winter. When in Cambridge I was speaking to a gardener whose sweet corn was two weeks ahead of mine, as I am about a hundred miles north of where he gardens.
Frank, that is so interesting.
Having tall trees is a good idea. When travelling down from Manchester to Cambridge in Eastern England I have to cross the Fens, flat lands reclaimed from the sea in the eighteenth century. The wind on the East of England can come down from Scandinavia and Russia, so on the flat lands of that part of the East it there is no natural shelter. So I see that some farms have large stands of trees around them to shield them from the wind.
My wife's uncle, whose farm is on the plains of Mayo in the West of Ireland, has done the same with his farmhouse, there is a large stand of trees to protect against the Atlantic wind, but inside the sheltered zone he has an apple orchard.
You are absolutely right in saying that no year is the same as another when it comes to weather and gardening. I have a lot of tall trees that protect my garden from wind, but the trees can sometimes fall with a big wind. My garden has very good drainage so flooding is not an issue. These are good solutions that you mention. I like the idea of pipes to direct the water down to the roots.