Is It Autumn?

Wednesday continued this week’s theme of windy and showery weather with a few sunny intervals. It wasn't particularly mild and the weather suddenly has a bit of an autumnal feel to it. Still after a long run of slightly milder, than we might expect, months dating all the way back to last winter the sequence has to come to an end sooner or later.

This week the weather isn't the only thing to have an hint of autumn.

It struck me that as I took a photo of this little bit of produce harvested on Tuesday it was a little bit autumnal.

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

Soaked It Up

The winds of Monday had died down although Tuesday was still a blustery day with some short showers.

We'd decided on a visit to the plot in the afternoon to see how it had coped with the wind and rain of the last few days. Our sweetcorn, cardoons and runner beans were at the top of the inspection list. Our sweetcorn has survived but is leaning rather alarmingly in an easterly direction.

We gave some thought to trying to straighten the plants up but decided that might do more harm than good so the plants have been left to their own devices. I’ve no idea how the crop will be affected we’ll have to wait and see as there’s not much we can do about it now.

We have two cardoon plants. One has been devastated by the wind and will need to be cut down to allow access to our autumn fruiting raspberries. The other which has some protection from the wind from our plot neighbour’s shed has survived intact.

Our runner beans, which I was most concerned about as they are in the middle of producing an excellent harvest, have survived the wind very well. Our last couple of climbing Cobra French beans had already become detached at the top of the frame but still remain almost upright even after all the winds. I had expected to see more leaf damage but they've survived very well.

We've already had 54.6mm about 2 inches of rain this month but the soil has soaked it up like a giant sponge. 

This bed was cleared of its crop of Marfona potatoes and it dug over very nicely. The ground was surprisingly dry considering all the rain of the last few days and a few more showers aren’t going to do any harm especially if these very breezy conditions continue.

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

After Wet and Windy - Gales

After the wet and windy weather on Sunday we just had even windier weather on Monday but without the rain. Temperature wise it wasn't a bad day as the temperature rose to 20.6°C in the afternoon and we had some long sunny spells.

The strongest winds were reserved for the afternoon with a record gust speed for any summer month of 27 mph. It’s already the windiest August of the four I have records for.

We’re planning a trip down to the plot this afternoon to see what damage the wind has done. Our cardoons are unlikely to have survived but I'm hoping that our runner beans and sweetcorn will be still standing.

Last year as this photo shows our cardoon was still standing at the beginning of September but I'm betting that won’t be the case this year.

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

Wet And Windy

It rained for most of the day although we did have a brief spell in the middle of the afternoon when the rain stopped and the sun tried to make an appearance but the cloud and rain won out in the end as it remained showery for the rest of the day. By midnight the rainfall total was 25.2mm the wettest August day I’ve recorded and a couple of gusts of wind had hit 21 mph also the highest I've recorded in August.

My updated table of the top twenty wettest days I’ve recorded now looks like this:

It does show that most of our wettest days come with summer storms as the top ten wettest days are mostly summer months.

Here’s a grass cutting challenge on the plot once the the weather brightens up a bit.

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

Sunday Rainfall Update

Well the rain had stopped for a little while so here’s an update of the rainfall total up to 16:00 on Sunday. Our current daily total is 19.2mm making it the 14th wettest day I’ve recorded.

As I'm about to post this update it’s started to rain again.

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

Surprises

Saturday was a pleasantly mild day with some longish sunny spells but the breeze was a bit on the blustery side. By early afternoon when we visited the plot it was hard to imagine that it had rained heavily on Friday as the sun and wind had already dried out the ground.

Now we have one patch on our allotment that to put it mildly is in need of a tidy up. It’s not an area of the plot that we tend to take too many photographs of but the picture below shows this patch at the beginning of May this year.

It’s an area where “stuff” was dumped as various plot were cleared over the years. There is a large elderberry and Jostaberry bush growing almost wild and a bed of comfrey grows well here supplying leaves for the compost heap and plenty of flowers for the bees. You can just about make out some bluebells in flower too. Then there are the weeds, couch grass, docks, nettles and thistles all growing unchecked. Over the years a wild blackberry bush has become established and by this time of the year it has almost taken over this patch using the Jostaberry and elderberry as support. Without us paying any attention to it over the years it is producing a bumper crop of blackberries.

They’re not poor quality either but large pest free berries and as I said lots of them. The downside is that picking them comes at a price as the berries are protected by some wicked thorns but the temptation to reach that little bit further into the middle of the thicket to reach a particular large ripe juicy berry cannot be resisted.

By the time we’d finished picking we’d managed to harvest just over 1kg of fruit. There’s still lots of fruit to come and plenty left for the blackbirds who will be able to reach some of the ripe berries we couldn’t reach. The middle punnet above contains the easy pickings from our thornless variety Loch Ness and the two larger punnets on either side our unexpected pickings from our wild blackberry bush.

So our overgrown area of plot in desperate need of renovation is producing an excellent crop of berries. Exactly how I renovate this may be governed by our wild blackberry.

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

Better Times Ahead?

Friday wasn't too bad a day until mid to late afternoon when the rain and thunder arrived. There were reports on the news regarding flash flooding in many parts of Yorkshire. Our daily rainfall total came to reasonably high 13.6mm but not excessive.

It’s around this time of year when I usually notice a fuchsia making a bid for freedom and heading out of a border and across the lawn. 

Normally I don't do anything at all apart from carefully mow around the edges of the fuchsia and lift it up to cut the grass beneath. As the summer goes on I get less and less careful about mowing around the plant until the one occasion when the mower takes on a life of its own and the fuchsia is decimated in a second becoming part of the grass clippings inside the mower collection box. This year I've taken pity on this poor plant, which makes the best of a bad job each year, and have taken a few cuttings.

This still leaves a few straggling shoots heading over the grass from the original plant. Most years it manages a few flowers before the inevitable mowering occurs. Perhaps I’ll be able to take a few later cuttings if these don't root.

Just to see if I could do a similar watering can to rainfall conversion for anybody who works in imperial units I reckon a 2 gallon watering can emptied over a one square yard area of allotment equates to 0.428 inches of rainfall. Unless of course you know better.

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

Some You Win Some You Don’t

Thursday wasn't a bad sort of a day but nothing special for August. A few sunny spells and a high temperature of 22.3°C.

Sue has some more wallflowers and sweet Williams to plant out in the plot for cut flowers for next year. I wasn't looking forward to preparing a bed suitable for planting out knowing how dry the ground is at the moment. I took the cultivator down to the plot to attempt to prepare the allotted bed.

Now I have to admit that the soil in the picture to the right does look a little bit damper than the before image on the left. In truth it’s a bit like cultivating in gravel rather than soil. At a real pinch and using some compost to plant in it might be possible to plant out some young plants. The weather forecast is for heavy rain on Friday, Sunday and Monday so we decided to leave planting for a few days to see if some rain improves the condition of the soil.

We usually grow our runner beans up a wigwam made from bamboo canes. This year we wanted to try growing them through weed control fabric to cut down on weeding. Sue thought we ought to try something different to wigwams and grow the beans up canes placed in a long row rather than a circle. I didn't fancy trying to form a circle and cut holes in the correct places for canes and plants to pass through weed control fabric. There seemed to be a lot of guess work involved for my liking so a sort of compromise was reached with each variety of bean planted in its own little tunnel of bamboo canes.

When the beans were planted out on 06 June the bed looked like this. The beans had taken up far more room than I had envisaged as we’d normally mange to fit our sweet corn crop into this size of bed as well. This year that was going to have to move. I wasn't convinced that the beans would fill out the bed. On the plus side though it was easy to prepare the weed control fabric for this planting method. We planted a row of Inca berry plants along the centre of the bed to make it appear a little fuller. 

I needn't have worried. The beans have grown to fill up the bed and are producing masses of beans which are easier to pick than when grown up wigwams. The Inca berries are doing their best to compete with the runner beans. The only issue so far is that the end couple of climbing French beans Cobra have become detached from the support at the top of the frame. This might be a problem if it gets really windy. Of course we haven't had any weeding to do either. A result!

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