We'd had a couple of poor weeks of weather for August and it seemed like autumn had arrived already. Then, on Friday and Saturday summer returned. The mid afternoon temperature on Saturday afternoon reached 29.3°C (84.7°F), not high enough to be August's hottest day or make it into the top twenty hottest days, but the highest so late into August. However, it's worth noting that the highest temperature I've recorded late into the year was 29.4°C (84.9°F) on 13 September 2016.
I'd spent some time on Friday afternoon lifting potatoes and it was warm work.
The potatoes in the photo above are Casablanca which is a First Early potato but we've found that they produce a good crop when left in the ground and that they store well and can be used well into autumn. As the forecast was for Saturday to be even warmer, which turned out to be correct, I didn't fancy lifting the rest of the remaining rows of potatoes thinking I'd find a less energetic plot activity.
As I was lifting the potatoes I was surprised at how dry the ground was. My impression of August to date is that it had been a rather wet and windy month. The strength of some of the winds can be in no doubt as it's brought down one of our apple trees. The rainfall is a different matter. There's been plenty of media reports of flash flooding but we've been lucky to miss any such downpours. Our rainfall total to date for August is 33.4mm and if we don't have anymore rainfall this month that would make it the driest August of the last 10 years. So far we have had 15 days out of 24 with some amount of rainfall most of it in very small amounts which don't do much for keeping the ground moist. As you can see from the chart above we've had rainfall on 4 days this week but in total it only amounts to 1.6mm (0.06in) which is of no use in keeping the ground damp. Instead of digging potatoes I decided my time would be better spent watering a few crops.
In between coffee breaks there was still time left to do a little bit of harvesting on what turned out to be a hot Saturday afternoon.
Sunday is forecast to be even hotter so it might make its way into the record books
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Baked potatoes straight from the ground, my, oh, my! Baked potato digger, too. I sympathize.
ReplyDeleteI'm leaving them in the ground to bake a bit more! I'm confident this weather will not last more than a few days and then I'll be glad of an active job at the allotment to keep warm.
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