Tuesday turned out to be incredibly mild for late October as once again the thermometer hit the twenty degree Celsius mark.
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| Temperature, Sunshine and Rainfall Monday 27 Oct 2014 - Wednesday 29 Oct 2014 |
Having just celebrated five years of weather recording, 20.2°C on 28 October is the latest in the year that temperatures have managed the twenty degree level. The first few spots of rain arrived around teatime but it never amounted to much with a total of only 1.0mm for the day. The temperature plummeted overnight to an early morning low of 3.4°C on Wednesday morning.
Back in that pretty poor August one of our cardoon plants was badly battered by the winds whilst one which has some protection from a neighbouring plot holders shed survived intact.
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| Storm damaged and sheltered cardoon 16 August 2014 |
There wasn't any way the plant on the left could be saved so all the broken stems were removed to the compost heap. The trouble is as you can see from the photo below that didn't leave much of a plant.
Since August this little area has been left to do its own thing. Whilst I can happily report that the cardoon is well on its way to recovery it did give all that couch grass time to spread and grow into a tangle of weeds.
The couch grass has been dug out (well as much as was possible) and the area around the cardoon dug over and this little area now looks much tidier. As you can see on the right of the picture the cardoon that survived August’s gales is ready for the compost heap. Once all this year’s dead growth is removed there’ll be very little plant left. Maybe I should leave all those seed heads in place over winter for the birds and only tidy up around the base of the plant. In any case a couple of months on from the storm damage it’s the storm damaged plant that looks in much better condition.
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My artichokes were cut down and are back up quite tall again now. There are some really big fat juicy slugs hiding out in the leaves as well. I don't know if I cut them down too soon, but they seem to have a lot of new green growth for the oncoming winter.
ReplyDeleteOur artichoke doesn't grow as well as the cardoons which are as tough as old boots.
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