Is it May!

The early hours of Wednesday morning saw the temperature fall below 0°C for the first time since March 14th. Just as well I gave our nectarine some protection. Wednesday itself turned out to be another very pleasant sunny day.

I made a trip down to the plot to see if the frost had done any damage to our crops. All the usual suspects had been caught by the frost and to some extent the exceptionally mild April might just have been wasted on some of our crops.

I thought that our emerging potato sprouts would be caught and I was correct.  The potatoes should recover but will crop a little later but hopefully before blight strikes, usually the beginning of August.

Frosted potato Red Duke of York

Our outdoor grapevine on the plot also had its new shoot frost damaged. Our Boskoop Glory vine growing on the shed escaped almost unaffected unlike Madeleine Sylvaner growing on some trellis in an open part of the plot.

Grape Vine - Madeleine Sylvaner

After all the discussions on Mrs GL's blog about our Kiwi and the possibility of some fruits this year that too was damaged by the frost. I'm not sure whether the unopened flowers are damaged though.

Kiwi

Ending on a positive note I was able to harvest enough sprouting broccoli for a small helping our first harvest from a normally prolific crop at this time of year.

White Sprouting Broccoli