Season of Mellow Fruitfulness

Wednesday gave us another dull miserable day. We had light drizzle for most of the day and a short spell of heavier rain late in the afternoon.

It’s certainly time to think about gathering in all those summer crops that are still managing to hang on and give a late harvest. In the greenhouse we still have one or two bunches of grapes in good condition.

From 03 Weather 2010

I think the little brown spots on the grapes are probably a sign that they need picking straight away. This shouldn’t be too much of a hardship!

A Timely Reminder

Tuesday continued with the present spell of dull, horrible weather. It’s the sort of weather where even in the greenhouse things can suffer from the damp conditions almost overnight. I noticed that one of our peppers was starting to suffer from mould.

From 03 Weather 2010

This was a plant that hadn’t received the care and attention it should have but had managed nevertheless to produce a fruit. I figured it was time to harvest the good quality ones before they too became unusable.

From 03 Weather 2010

Jimmy Nardellos and Tequila Sunrise have both performed well and I intend to plant these two varieties again next year.

A chink of light in the drabness

We’d run out of fresh vegetables so a trip to the plot was required. The idea was to plant our winter onions too. This would involve a little weed clearing and perhaps a spot of digging. We arrived in drizzly damp conditions and quickly decided to just harvest some vegetables leaving our winter onions to be planted another day.

A clump of hardy cyclamen shone out in the gloom at the plot to brighten up our visit.

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This view through the greengages certainly doesn’t do the drabness of the day any justice at all!

From 03 Weather 2010

Monday was the dullest day since I installed the solar radiation sensor to my weather station at the beginning of June. The little graph shows these values for the last 7 days. It’s the first time the value has failed to reach 100 watts/m2 .

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Our first home grown melon

On Sunday the wind continued in a north easterly direction giving us another cool day. A complete absence of sunshine gave the impression that winter was approaching.

To make up for the poor weather we decided to try one of our melons, Noir des Carmes, growing in the greenhouse. We weren’t disappointed. Whist it was only small it packed some real flavour. I will certainly have ago with this variety again next year.

From 03 Weather 2010

Cold

It was cold over night leaving a chill in the air for Saturday morning. The picture below shows the temperatures across West Yorkshire at 08:00.

From 03 Weather 2010

Click here to view the current Weather Underground Map. I can't be sure of the view that will load but it works just like your average Google map. The map may take a while to load and I click on terrain for a less cluttered view.

The wind was blowing from the North West keeping it cool all day. The maximum of 13.3°C and overnight low of 4.1°C gave us a miserable daily mean temperature of just 8.9°C. I’m hoping that our squashes haven’t suffered from the cold weather. It’s probably time to harvest them on our next visit to the plot.

A shock to the system

After some pleasant mild sunny days Friday came as a real shock to the system. Around 08:00 I recorded our strongest gust of wind since I started keeping records (23.0mph). There’s plenty of houses around sheltering my weather station and so I don’t get motorway speeds on my anemometer more your commute to work speeds. Not only was it windy, there was the shock of the temperature too. The maximum of 12.1°C was exactly equal to Thursday’s minimum!

Autumn is definitely here now as my winter onions arrived from Dobies today. Now I need to get a patch dug on the plot and get them planted.

From 03 Weather 2010

Continuing mild

It remained mild on Thursday but after some sunny intervals in the morning the afternoon turned cloudy with a few heavy showers which continued into the evening.

Our tomato growing this year seems to have been fraught with difficulties, but there have been some small success. We chose to try a variety called Amish Gold and it’s turned out to be an excellent choice.

From 03 Weather 2010

The variety has produced a good crop of excellent tasting beefsteak type tomatoes.

Summer makes a late comeback

Wednesday was superb with some long sunny periods and warm too. It did cloud over late afternoon with our first drop of rain around 18:30. Pity the forecast predicts a change to cold northerly winds by the week end.

It’s now time to start give some thought to what went well and what didn’t on the plot. We like to try something new each year even if it’s only a different variety of vegetable. This year we tried a different carrot called Flakkee. It’s turned out well and produced a good crop of well flavoured roots.

From 03 Weather 2010

Its ultimate test is to see if it survives winter left in the ground with only a protection of straw against the winter frost and snow. Click here for more details of how we protect carrots over winter.