A Potato Blunder!

It’s been a variable week with some very hot days in the middle of the week before ending the week with some cool, showery and windy conditions. In the middle of the week it was a bit too hot to do much gardening. Wednesday became our hottest day of the year with the late afternoon temperature reaching 29.9°C or 85.8°F

Temperature & Rainfall Records 22 - 28 June 2020

Way back in March we planted up some old recycling crates with potatoes. The hope was to get some nice tasty early potatoes before those grown in the ground outside were ready. We planted two varieties one a trusted favourite Casablanca, and the other was International Kidney. 

08 March 2020

I assumed both these were first early cropping potatoes but never checked up on International Kidney. This variety is known as Jersey Royals providing it's grown in Jersey and they're always one of the first home grown new potatoes in the shops. I assumed therefore that this was a first early variety but if I'd bothered to check up I'd have found out its an early maincrop variety and needs a longer growing season.

This has meant we've had a review of how we will go about harvesting our potatoes on the plot. We planted up one bed with Casablanca and International Kidney as our first earlies with the intention of harvesting these first. Our Casablanca potatoes are now in flower and will soon be ready for harvesting but International Kidney is showing no signs of flowering just yet and will need leaving in the ground longer than we anticipated.

Potato - Casablanca

Luckily, one of the varieties we are growing in our trial bed is Ulster Prince which is a first early variety and so we'll test this out as soon as the flowers start to fade. Like Casablanca, Ulster Prince is just coming into flower in our trial bed of six different varieties.

Potato - Ulster Prince

Our plan was to replant our early potato bed with a crop of dwarf French beans which we will start off in pots at home. If we leave our International Kidney potatoes in for a few extra weeks it might be a bit late for the beans so we are thinking of replanting our early brassica bed up with beans instead. The cauliflowers in this bed are just starting to form heads, the calabrese is harvested and there are only a few Regency cabbages left to harvest so I'm anticipating this bed will be ready to clear in a couple of weeks. Perhaps I should be sowing some beans this week.

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

Hottest Day This Year - Back to Green

Wednesday took over as the hottest day of the year when the temperature made it to 29.9°C (85.8°F) late into the afternoon. It became the 16th hottest day I've recorded.

Top Twenty Hottest Days 2010 - Date

It took over the record this year from 20th May and a high temperature of 29.3°C or 84.7°F. Back then we were in the middle of a dry spell and the grass on one of Ruby's walks looked like this.

I remarked at the time it looked as though it was the end of a long hot and dry summer. Since then temperatures have been normal or slightly below normal with some decent spells of rain. The result is that the grass on Ruby's walk this Wednesday morning looked much fresher and greener.

What a difference a few weeks and a drop of rain make. If the forecast is correct Thursday will be even hotter before the hot spell breaks down on Friday and we return to average June temperatures. We might even get a drop more rain to keep that grass looking nice and green.

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

Scorcher Incoming

The next few days are set to be hot with the afternoon temperatures expected to get towards the 30°C  (86.0°F) mark. Our highest temperature of the year so far is 29.3°C (84.7°F) on the 20 May.

It might be a little bit too hot to do anything much at the allotment. I'm not sure that there's all that much planted that benefits from such hot weather. It may well mean that we will be returning to watering duties after a couple of weeks off.

We made a video tour around our plot last week in the company of Ruby.

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

No Watering Required for Now!

For a few days last week, the forecast was for thunderstorms during the late afternoon and evening with associated heavy showers. However, apart from one very short sharp shower on Wednesday night, they were all further west and missed us

Temperature & Rainfall Data June 2020

The rainfall from a few days ago transformed the ground at the allotment and the dry hard earth that resembled concrete was converted into diggable soil. I’d three big beds left to dig over and I decided to tackle these with the cultivator on Tuesday afternoon. I’d an idea about the order I was going to tackle these beds in starting with the easiest first and leaving what I thought would be the trickiest to the end.

The first bed turned over the easiest and after a couple of runs up and down with the cultivator apart adding a bit of fish blood and bone fertiliser, it was ready for sowing seeds . The second bed was just as easy and was soon turned over and ready for planting up. I wasn’t so lucky with the third bed which I thought would be the most difficult because I thought it hadn’t dried out as much as the other two beds. My suspicions were correct and it was a bit on the too wet side to dig. It was also pretty hard so I decided to use the machine to turn over the ground and break it up a little bit. It will need turning over again when the ground is a little bit drier so that it’s in a suitable condition for planting. In the meantime, we’ve now got plenty of room to do some more sowing and planting.

Besides getting lots more vegetables planted out and sown, harvesting is now getting a bit more varied and a lot more productive. We had our first picking of redcurrants this week. We will have to harvest them as they ripen or the resident blackbirds will be only too happy to finish them off. There's already plenty of evidence that they are already helping themselves to the ripe berries.

Thinking about fruit on the ground, we've got lots of immature fallen apples but it's not a result of any pest damage but the results of June drop.

Even though the tree has lost many small fruits there are still lots left on the tree.

All advice is that we should remove lots of the remaining fruit in order to get larger apples at harvesting time, a case of quality rather than quantity. I have to admit it's something we've never done. Sue was considering removing some of the tiny apples this year in order that we get larger apples. We'll have to wait and see if we do actually get round to thinning the fruits out.

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

Dull and Wet

Friday was a miserable day by any standards. It rained for most of the day putting any gardening activities on hold.

Rainfall & Temperature Records 12 June 2020

By the end of the day, we'd had 13.8mm (0.54in) of rainfall making it our wettest day since 16 February 2020 when we had 16.8mm or 0.66in. It should keep the allotment and garden moist for a week or so. I think it seems wetter as a result of a couple of months without any rain. Looking back to last year at the same stage in June we'd had slightly more rain (50.6mm or 1.99in) than this year (45.8mm or 1.8in) but I don't think of last June as being particularly wet.

Friday did manage to break one June record as it became the dullest June I've recorded.

Temperature & Solar Energy Records for 01 -12 June 2020

My weather station doesn't measure hours of sunshine but the solar energy output gives some idea of how sunny any particular day has been. The first couple of days in June were bright and reasonably sunny giving values of around 400 units. Friday managed a value of 50 which is the sort of value we average in February when the hours of daylight are much shorter. 

The forecast is for the weather to improve over the next few days. 

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

Still Cold - Even In June

Apart from the first couple of days, it's been a cold start to June. Over the last few years, only 2012 has got off to a colder start than this year.

June Rolling Average Temperatures - 2010 - 2020

I had to look twice at the overnight low for 09 June when the temperature fell to 4.6°C (40.3°F). It's only the third time in 11 years that the temperature in June has fallen below the 5°C (41.0°F) mark. The figures are colour coded where darker red is above average and darker blue below average.

At least the rain has meant that we can get on planting out at the allotment. Hopefully, the plants will be acclimatised to the cool nighttime temperatures as they have been hardening off at home before their move down to the allotment. I do have a few worries about our sweetcorn which got planted out today as through lack of space it had been growing on in our cold greenhouse.

The plot is now starting to fill up. We still have plenty of space left to fill but weather permitting all our cultivated beds should be planted up over the next couple of weeks. We've two or three beds that need digging over. These became too dry to dig in the prolonged dry spell of weather and resembled concrete rather than soil. I'm hoping that the rain over the last few days will have magically converted the concrete back to soil.

The recent rainfall has done wonders for the potatoes. It's strange how rainfall seems so much better for crops than water from the tap.

The weather forecasts for the next few days are very mixed but it looks as though we are in for plenty of showers. I think our planting will have to be done in bits and pieces between the showers. At least we aren't spending most of the time at the plot watering.

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

At Last Some Rain - Now To Start Clearing the Backlog

I haven't added a lockdown day as it seems it's ended judging from the thousands of people joining protest marches around the country!

After going something like two and a half months without any useful rain the last few days have seen persistent showers bringing a reasonable amount of rain. It's amounted to a total of 20.2mm (0.8in) by Sunday morning.

Temperature & Rainfall Records 31-05-2020 to 06-06-2020

All the rainfall has come as showers but it's amounted to enough to make a full blue column which is the amount we might expect in the course of an average week. At the allotment progress on getting summer crops planted out had ground almost to a halt as more time was taken up with watering and beds were so dry that any planting out we did do took much longer than normal. The result is we have a backlog of plants at home desperate to be planted out before they spoil.

First on the list is a batch of brassicas which include cabbages, Red Lodero, Kilaton, Kalibro, and Cabbice to hopefully keep us supplied into winter. Then there's broccoli Monclano and cauliflower Clapton both of which should be ready to harvest late into summer or early autumn. At least we have the ground prepared and covered with environmesh ready for planting out.

Next on the list will be our runner beans Enorma and Moonlight together with our climbing French beans Cobra and Sunshine. We've still to erect the frames for these beans to climb up, but before the rain, the ground was so hard pushing supports into the ground was almost impossible. Hopefully, the rain will have softened the ground making the job of erecting the supports much easier and quicker.  

Also waiting at home are two varieties of sweetcorn Swift and Earlibird. The ground where these will be planted out has already been dug over so once again I'm hoping that it won't take too long to get these plants into the ground. 

Following on from the sweetcorn will be our courgettes and winter squash.

The varieties of courgette are Defender and Orelia. This year we are trying Crown Prince, MusQuee De Provence, and Uchiki Kuri as our varieties of winter squash.

Then all we need to do is get our tomato plants into their final pots in the home and plot greenhouses.

That will more or less clear our backlog of vegetable plants but somewhere in amongst planting out all these vegetables we've got to find time for planting out some sweet peas and sunflowers. We could do to get some more peas sown too. It might be a busy week coming up providing the weather doesn't thwart us.

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

Lockdown Day 71? - Brilliant May Weather but Maybe Not For Gardening

Generally the weather throughout May has been very good. The UK Met Office has reported it as one of the sunniest Mays on record. My sunshine records don’t necessarily back up that statement but it was certainly sunnier than any of the summer months of last year.

It’s also turned out to be a mild May too, although not as warm as the Mays of 2017 and 2018 making it the 3rd hottest of the last 11 years.

Although we've had all this lovely weather it’s not been so brilliant for the garden or allotment. Since the middle of March, there has been no rainfall of any note, meaning the garden and allotment are now bone dry and in desperate need of some wet weather. They’ve gone from waterlogged in the middle of March to parched by the end of May. As a result, nothing is growing very well at the allotment despite lots of time spent watering.

It's not surprising then that this May has finished up the driest of the last 11 years.

Lots of grassed areas look as though they've come through a long hot summer rather than it being the beginning of meteorological summer. The weather is set to change this week becoming much cooler with the possibility of some welcome rain.

Despite finishing with an above average temperature, this May had the latest spring frosts I’ve recorded with a temperature of -0.4°C (31.3°F) recorded on 14th May. It meant making sure our potatoes and strawberry flowers were protected from the frost but unfortunately, our kiwi and grapevine left unprotected were damaged.

Around the same time as the frost, we managed to have one of the windiest May days I’ve recorded as well as the hottest May Day I’ve recorded when the temperature reached 29.3°C (84.7°F) on 20th May. I also keep a check on the average monthly high and low temperatures and, whilst this May had the second highest average high temperature of 19.4°C (66.9°F) beaten only by 2018 with 20.5°C (68.9°F), it had the second lowest night time temperature of 7.0°C (44.6°F) with only 2013 colder with 6.8°C (44.2°F). There's no wonder plants at the allotment have been struggling to get a foothold.

These broad bean plants have struggled to come to terms with the lack of rain, warm daytime temperatures but cool nights and the odd windy day didn't help either.

We'll now have to see if the lovely weather of May turns out to be the best of the year. It's rather disappointing to see an end to the lovely sunny weather but hopefully, some welcome rain will get the allotment season restarted. It's on hold at the moment with lots of plants at home waiting to be planted out. It will be made so much easier after a decent day's rain. 

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