We had just one day when the temperature fell below 0°C (32.0°F) in January. February has started off fairly mild too but we’ve already had a couple of below 0°C mornings this week. Not anything serious but cold enough to remind us that it is still winter.
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| Temperature Records 05-07 February 2020 |
It looks as though next week is going to provide us with the worst weather of winter so far. Beginning on Sunday we are set for a week of stormy weather with gale to storm force winds accompanied with heavy rain and the possibility of snow showers.
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| Forecast from https://www.tameteo.com/modeles/en-royaume+uni-ecmwf-94.htm |
The weather model forecast above is from the ECMWF weather model for Sunday at mid day and, yes we are somewhere under that purple colouring indicating very heavy rain accompanied by gale force to storm force winds.
On a brighter note our main seed order from Kings seeds arrived a few weeks ago but we still had to sort out our potato varieties for this year. Our local garden centre always holds a potato day around this time of year. It’s possible to buy individual potato tubers and so we take the opportunity to buy 4 tubers of six varieties we either haven’t grown before or haven’t grown for a good number of years.
This year we’re trying Gemson, Maris Piper, Mayan Rose, Pentland Javelin, Sarpo Una, and Ulster Prince.
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| Trial Potato Varieties Chitting In Egg Boxes |
For our main crop this year we are growing Apache, Casablanca, Elfe, International Kidney, Nadine, Osprey and Rudolph.
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| Main Potato varieties Casablanca, Elfe, International Kidney and Osprey |
These have all been set out to chit in the summerhouse covered with fleece as some protection against night time frosts. We’ll be planting some early roots up in bags and boxes towards the end of February but our main potatoes won’t be going into the ground until the beginning of April. Well that's the plan!
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Looking on the bright side, you know what you are in for in advance and can prepare for it. Dandelions are blooming here, so cheerful.
ReplyDeleteAs we’re not used to getting exceptionally strong winds we don’t take precautions as is done for hurricanes. It’s a case of hoping we don’t get too much damage.
DeleteWe’ve got snowdrops coming into flower and a few early daffodils that are in especially sheltered and sunny spots.
Low of -1.3 overnight here. Not looking forward to the next 48 hrs. Holding off on the seed potato purchase. Will there be any left when I decide to buy them in?
ReplyDeleteHi Mal.
DeleteWe had a cold night too down to -1.8. Looks pretty grim for Sunday and Monday. Just have to hope we don’t get any damage. We got some seed potatoes late on last year. The problem was all the shoots were stuck in the net bags the potatoes come in. The wind is starting to pick up now (early Saturday evening) after what turned out to be a not too bad a day.