31/05/2026
It’s been a hard week. Behind the smiling photo of a flower farmer with an armload of bountiful blooms is a mounting anxiety.
As land workers, farmers and market gardeners see first hand the effects of our changing climate. The record -breaking heat of the past week is just one aspect of the weather challenges we’ve had to face this year so far.
Up here on the North Norfolk coast, we had just 4.4mm of rainfall in April - under 10% of the 48mm average expected for mid-spring. We were lucky to escape any late frost due to our coastal location, but prior to to heat hitting a week ago, we had a ten-day period of grey skies and 10 degree C temps; combined with the dry conditions this has really had an impact on our May production.
And now over the past week we’ve gone from 10-12 degrees up to 30 plus degrees in the space of 24-48 hours. I recorded two days over 30 degrees on Monday and Tuesday - in May - unheard of! Temperature records have been broken day after day across the UK. This is having a significant impact on our flower production and on our income.
Our peony harvest is supposed to run for about four weeks from the third week of May to midsummer; it’s over already. Our early, mid and late season varieties have all flowered out at once in the record heat in just ten days. Spare a thought for the larger peony farms across the UK and Europe for whom this must have been a nightmare!
If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know that Astrantia is one of our key crops for early summer; this year the crop has been severely impacted by the dry spring and the unseasonal heat. Again we have early and later flowering varieties - whilst we’d expect to bring in about £1000 from our bed of early Roma and Red varieties, I reckon I’ll be lucky to clear £150 this year. That’s not going to pay the bills.
Continued in the comments:-
