Gardening Activities Have Stopped!

We've had more rain over the last week, enough to put a stop to visits to the plot. We've managed only 2 dry days so far in October. Whilst we've had more rain over the last week it's not been in large amounts but enough each day to keep the already saturated ground saturated. By Sunday night October's rainfall has already amounted to 46.8mm (1.84in) and is already above October's average for the last 10 years.

Temperatures have staged a bit of a recovery over the last week but still only October 2012 remains colder at this point in the month. We've just had a couple of days where the daytime temperature has reached what we might expect at this time of the year. The recovery in the average daily temperature has been due to some milder nights.

We haven't visited the plot since my last blog post when we cut back the hazel and cobnut trees and began removing the honeyberry bushes. We'll need to visit soon to harvest a few fresh vegetables. There's plenty of jobs to be getting on with both at the allotment and in the garden but we need a spell of better weather before we can make a start on them.

We did have a day out on Saturday heading up to Cumbria and then to the Settle to Carlisle Railway line to do a little bit of steam train photography. We managed to find some heavy showers in Cumbria but at Ribblehead Viaduct conditions were much better with some sunny spells. I've included our video of 6201 Princess Elizabeth working hard on the climb up to Shap summit on the West Coast Main Line and then as she crosses the famous Ribblehead Viaduct on the picturesque Settle to Carlisle railway line. 

6201 Princess Elizabeth crossing Ribblehead Viaduct - The Cumbrian Mountain Express

There still doesn't seem to be much improvement in the forecast for the next week but there seems to be the possibility of some drier weather towards the end of the month.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett