Tuesday 24 March 2015

Back to Some Gardening

Monday wasn't a bad day at all. It started off bright and sunny but clouded over a bit around lunchtime and then the sunshine returned mid afternoon.
Saturday 21 to Monday 23 March 2015 - Temperature, Solar radiation and Wind Chill
At times it felt pretty chilly on Monday due to the strong breeze which as you can see from the purple wind chill effect, indicated above, making the temperature feel a little cooler than it was.

I thought it was about time I made a little bit more space in the greenhouse ready for sowing more seeds at the beginning of next month. I moved a few of our new strawberry plants out of the greenhouse and into our cold-frame. 
I like to think that I've moved them into the cold-frame to harden them off and to become more acclimatised to life outdoors. It’s what's suggested on all the gardening programmes and in gardening magazines. I’m not too sure that there’s much difference in coldest temperatures between our cold greenhouse, cold-frame and outdoors. I’m trying to collect a few temperatures to check this more accurately but so far I only have temperatures covering the last 3 nights so not much to report. 

Our banana tree has had the luxury of spending the winter in the greenhouse this year. For the last couple of years it’s been left outside with some straw over the root to protect against any severe frosts. After a winter in the greenhouse it looked like this.
It was definitely looking a bit sorry for itself so I decided to give it a tidy up ready for it come back into life over the next few weeks. The dead leaves were removed and the thickish stem was cut back rather drastically. 
Hopefully the new leaves will soon start to shoot from the centre of the cut back stem. We've still to decide where it’s going to spend summer or indeed if it will remain in a large pot or be planted in the ground. Our main concern is to find it a spot out of the wind to avoid as much leaf damage as possible through the summer.

2 comments:

  1. I suppose you could sink the banana pot into the ground, then it could be moved if necessary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like the idea of sinking the pot in the ground. I might give it a go.

      Delete

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