Hot Composting Additions

We had a couple of days in Norfolk at the end of the week. It's what I think of as one of the drier areas of the country but on our visit it managed to rain.

RSPB Titchwell Marsh

On our visit to RSPB Titchwell Marsh on Friday the skies were rather threatening but we only had a little light rain late in the afternoon. It was a different story on Saturday as although we had a lovely sunny morning it didn't last and by mid afternoon it was pouring down.

Holt Station - North Norfolk Railway

You might remember I posted recently about trying out hot composting on the allotment. The heap consisted of chopped up twigs selected from the wood chippings delivered to the site. I thought that this heap might benefit from the addition of some green matter and as we are clearing away lots of spent summer crops there was plenty of material available. In keeping with the experiment all the green material was cut up into smaller pieces before adding to the heap.

Chopped Comfrey Leaves

So the hot composting heap has finished up consisting of the following:

5 barrowfulls of selected wood chippings
1/4 barrowfull of grass clippings

1/2 barrowfull of chopped comfrey leaves

1 barrowfull of chopped strawberry leaves

1 barrowfull of chopped tomato leaves

All the materials were given a good mixing. Although the heap is now pretty large it wasn't too difficult to mix at this stage.

The heap was then recovered with a piece of weed control fabric and will be left for a about a week before I give it another mixing.

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

Race Against Time

September has started off rather nicely, lets hope it continues for a while.

On the plot our late sowing of Onward peas have a race against time to see if we can actually get any peas before the plants succumb to the colder and darker days of late autumn.

Peas Onward on 28 September 2015

Last year we sowed our last row of peas on 08 August 2015 and they didn't come into flower until 28 September 2015. It was a cold September which didn't help and although the peas did produce some pods they didn't go on to fill up with peas.

This year we are trying another late sowing. This year's late sowing was made on 24 July 2016, a little earlier than last year to see if this time we can get a crop of peas.

Peas Onward 01 September 2016

This year's peas are already starting to flower. No doubt a few wet and mild days towards the end of August have helped . So this year's plants are now about a month ahead of last year's. Now we need a better September than last year and we may be lucky enough to get some peas.

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

Not a Bad Month

Wednesday was a decent end to the month. Not a great deal of sunshine more warm and cloudy and although August has been a good month it’s had a few naff days thrown in for good measure.

Temperature & Rainfall Records for August 2016

August's average temperature has finished up above average based on the last few years and that's been due to relatively mild night time temperatures rather than a string of excessively high daytime temperatures.

The first couple of weeks of the month were almost rain free but the last couple of weeks have made up for that and it's finished up with more than average rainfall.

August sees an end to meteorological summer for this year as the beginning of September is the start of meteorological autumn.

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

Hot Composting - An Experiment

Tuesday was another lovely late August day, dry with lots of sunshine and the temperature reaching 24.0°C or 75.2°F.

The other day I saw this article on the GrowVeg web site about Hot composting. The one thing I can't make enough of is good quality compost. My compost heaps usually produce some decent material but take a good twelve months or more to do this. I know my weaknesses in compost making. I haven't got an easy way of chopping all the compost material before it gets added to the heap and I don't turn the heap often enough. I find mixing the heap hard work although I think it would be easier if the material had been chopped up in the first place. Finally I'm never sure my composting material arrives at the heap in that magical mix of materials as seen on gardening programmes or in magazines.

However, the one thing we do have on site is a good supply of wood chips. Sometimes this is very woody and is ideal for use as a path topping on the allotments but sometimes a batch is much more leafy and twiggy. I've tipped five barrow fulls of this more leafy material in a heap on the plot. I think it would benefit from some green material so I'm going to add some grass mowings and some chopped up comfrey leaves to the heap and mix it together.

I’ll keep the heap covered with a piece of weed control fabric to try to keep in a bit of extra warmth and maybe a bit of rain out. I'll need to try to give the materials a mix on our visits to the allotment. My aim is to produce some compost to improve this bed before planting some fruit bushes next spring. 

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

Good and Bad on the Plot

Sunday wasn't much of a day weatherwise as it turned out to be cloudy all day although any rain held off and we managed an afternoon visit to the plot. Bank Holiday Monday was a much better day with almost unbroken sunshine all day. we decided to stay clear of any Bank Holiday traffic problems on the road and spent the afternoon at the allotment.

Our main crop potatoes are now all lifted although there is one small bed with some potatoes left in. They are the stragglers of the tubers we bought back in spring so I don't have great expectations regarding the crop from these potatoes. On Sunday I lifted the last two rows of our main crop which consisted of a full row of 10 Vales Sovereign and a mixed row of Vales Sovereign and Winston potatoes.

Vales Sovereign

Our row and a half of Vales Sovereign a variety we are growing for the first time this year produced an excellent crop of good sized potatoes weighing in at 13.4kg. There was a little bit of slug damage but the worst culprit was wireworm damage. It still left plenty of undamaged tubers and I've found from past experience that normally potatoes with wireworm damage will keep well for several months and that in decent sized potatoes the damage can be cut away leaving plenty of usable potato.

Winston

The four roots of Winston yielded some decent potatoes too weighing in at 4.5kg and as I've come to expect with this variety some wireworm damage. All in all I'm happy with the crop and if Vales Sovereign passes the taste test I'll consider growing it again next year. Once all the potatoes were dug the weed control fabric was put back in place over the freshly dug ground and it will be left in place over winter.

Besides digging up some potatoes we harvested our greengages as well.

If you look closely at the above photo you will see seven greengages in the bottom right hand corner. That's our greengage harvest for the year from two decent sized trees. There were a couple of fruits that we left on the tree which had split and been attacked by wasps. I think it could be described as a crop failure. Maybe next year will be better.

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

I Did Want a Drop of Rain!

Up until a few days ago we'd had a very dry spell of weather and while it would have been good for drying off our onions if the dry spell continued the plot badly needed some rain. Over Thursday and Saturday it certainly got that with 21.2mm on Thursday and a further 14.8mm on Saturday. Needless to say we haven't got any gardening done over the two days.

Temperature, Rainfall & Sunshine Records 25-27 August 2016

In the space of three days August has gone from being a dryish August to a wettish one. We've had some very heavy rain at times but not the heaviest of the year.

Rainfall Intensity for Ossett in 2016

The record is still held by the 01 July 2016 with 79.0mm/hr or 3.11"/hr. The highest intensity over the last few days was 53.5mm/hr (2.11mm/hr) on Thursday.

Luckily we chose Friday to have a day out and visit Scampston Hall and Gardens which is near Malton in North Yorkshire. Somehow sandwiched in between two very wet days was a lovely sunny day, just what we needed for exploring the Walled Garden and surrounding parklands. 

The Walled Garden was designed in 1999 by Piet Oudolf and is considered to be of the "New European Garden Style of planting. In contrast to this more modern design of the Walled Garden. the parkland at Scampston was designed around 1770 by Lancelot "Capability" Brown.

We will certainly be returning to Scampston to have a look around the gardens and grounds at different times of the year.

Now some sunshine would be good to do a little bit of harvesting and digging down on the plot.

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

A Bit of a Wet Day

Wednesday turned out to be another lovely summer's day. It didn't seem as sunny as Tuesday and the temperature was slightly lower too but nevertheless a lovely August day. Thursday was a different matter altogether.

Temperature, Rainfall & Sunshine Records for 23-25 August 2016

It rained in the early hours of Thursday morning and the dull weather continued through the morning with the occasional burst of rain. On the off change that the rain might hold off in the afternoon we headed for the plot. We had a few minutes before a few drops of rain began to fall. We carried on for a while but the rain gradually got heavier until we were forced to take shelter in the shed and brew an early cup of coffee.

The rain didn't show any sign of easing off so we decided to call it a day. I decided to give the tomatoes in the greenhouse a drink before we left. It's amazing how wet you can get filling up a couple of watering cans.

By early evening our rainfall total for the day had reached 15.8mm, (0.62ins) and it was still raining after taking this recording making it our wettest day since 28 March 2016 when we had 15.4mm or 0.61ins. Our wettest day this year was 04 March 2016 with 27.6mm (1.09ins)so we'll have to go some to beat that in the remaining four hours up to midnight.

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

August's Hottest

Monday was a miserable day with light rain on and off throughout the day whereas Tuesday was a lovely sunny day with the temperature reaching 28.6°C (83.5°F) making it easily the hottest day of the month.

We made the most of the fine weather on Tuesday to do a little bit of harvesting on the plot. Sue did most of the harvesting while I strimmed the grass.

You might notice that there are a few plums in the box of goodies but this year's crop has been very disappointing. Our last five Oullins plums to be harvested are in the box bringing this year's harvest to a meagre 3.0kg or 6.5lbs. It's the same story with our greengages. We've a few fruits which aren't yet ripe as the they are really hard but that doesn't seem to be stopping the wasps making the most of the few greengages that we do have.

We do have a few Victoria plums but we are having to share these with plum moth maggots. It's more or less a case of one for them and one for us at the moment. It means that all plums are first cut in half to check for intruders.

We've started to pick our first few apples which although they aren't quite ripe taste very good. This year I forgot to put up any codling moth traps. The result is lots of damaged apples which easily fall from the trees that form our apple hedge. I picked a bucket full up from around the trees which will upset the blackbirds who unsurprisingly don't seem to mind eating the damaged apples.

I'm sure I will have left a few apples in the grass for the blackbirds and in any case I don't suppose they will have to wait too long before more apples decide to fall from the tree.

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