Sunny and Mild

Friday started off like the last couple of days very dull and wet. Then just after lunch time the clouds dispersed, the sun came out, and the temperature lifted to 17.8° C or 64.0°F. The mild sunny weather tempted me out into the garden. There wasn't much I could do as the ground was wet and very squishy and squelchy.

After a dry spell of weather it’s been a rather wet week with 16.8mm (0.66") of rainfall and whilst that’s not a great amount it’s easy to forget that in October things don’t dry up as quickly as they do in summer. Especially with a few damp and dreary days thrown in for good measure.

As it was reasonably mild I decided to give our bird feeders a good clean out before winter really sets in. Too much wet weather seems to make the feeders a bit gunged up where the seed is dispensed. Hopefully they will be alright to last over winter now.

It’s now back to the time of year where the best of our bird photography is done from the comfort of the house watching the birds come and go to the feeders. Our little wren wasn’t a bad start.

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

A Miserable End to October

Wednesday and Thursday were dull and wet, failing to record any sunshine at all. My weather station has recorded 15.8mm (0.62”) of rainfall without a 24 hour spell of dry weather up to 10:30 am on Friday morning.

Temperature and Rainfall from Wednesday 28 through to Friday (10:30am) 30 October 2015

Friday is not starting off a great deal better although the heaviest of the rain should be past now with showers to follow.

We’ve not had an enormous amount of rainfall it’s just made everything rather wet and soggy.

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

Six Years of Weather Blogs and Some Harvesting

It's my blog's sixth birthday today well on the 27 October. The weather on Tuesday wasn't very good for its birthday in fact it was much like it was six years ago when it was damp and cloudy all day.

For the record here is a table of the highs and lows, wettest and driest days and months of the last six years.

Although the weather wasn't very nice we needed to make a visit to the allotment for some fresh vegetables. It had been ten days since our last visit. Although it hadn't actually rained it was a welly day as the grass was soaking wet.

We managed a decent harvest considering it's almost November. 

Our lettuces are managing to survive the damp conditions and cold nights which is surprising as they're not winter varieties. I thought it was about time to check out our parsnips and see if they had grown some reasonable sized roots. The first couple of roots were very disappointing with only a very small parsnip appearing out of the ground. I then came to one parsnip which I couldn't get out with my fork. The soil was dry and the root was very deep. In the end I had to use a spade to get the parsnip out of the ground without doing too much damage. Having dug a few more roots I am reasonably satisfied with the general size. They should keep us supplied well into winter. I think the flavour will be even better once they have had a frost. 

A complete list of our harvest can be found here. You may need to navigate down the page to the 27 October as this page lists all our harvests in October.

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

A Decent Weekend after a Wet Start

I don't suppose it's been too bad a weekend for the end of October. After some morning rain on Saturday it brightened up in the afternoon. Sunday was bright for most of the day but chilly finishing with an average daily temperature of 8.0°C (46.4°F) the lowest this autumn. 

We didn't manage a trip to the plot this weekend. However we are still managing to harvest a few salad leaves from our raised bed in the cold frame courtyard.

I have cheated a bit in the photograph as those Sungold tomatoes were picked last weekend from outside on the plot. I have been really impressed with our Sungold tomatoes grown outside this year. We picked our first outdoor ones on 11 August and they’ve provided us with a steady supply through to the end of October.

I checked through our apples and quinces stored in the summer house on Sunday afternoon. Luckily I only found one small Golden Delicious apple starting to turn mouldy. Our bowl of apples consists of Golden Delicious, Egremont Russet and Fiesta.

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

Wet and Windy

Wednesday saw the breakdown of our settled spell of weather. The early hours of Wednesday morning were wet with 8.8 mm (0.35”) of rainfall. The remainder of the day was dull and breezy.

Thursday on the other hand was dry but windy with the strongest gusts of the month. The recent spell of settled weather has been lovely and calm. A couple of breezy days has certainly brought lots of autumn leaves down from the trees.

Temperature, Rainfall and Hi Wind Speeds Wednesday 21 - Friday 23 October 2015

In the early hours of Friday morning the temperature fell to 2.3°C (36.1°F) our coldest temperature of autumn so far and unsurprisingly Friday finished with the coldest average daily temperature for the month of 8.2°C or 46.8°F.

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

Carrot Trials

Tuesday was another nice late autumn day with plenty of sunny spells and dry.

I blogged yesterday about harvesting carrots and I've called this post carrot trials. I'm not referring to trials in the sense of testing different varieties but in the problems we've had growing any carrots at all this year.

First sowing 21 April 2015

The tale begins back in late April this year when we sowed our main crop carrots. Things started off well enough and after a couple of weeks our young seedlings emerged and we thought things were going well. 

Good germination on 15 May 2015

However by late May all our seedlings had mysteriously disappeared. We put this down to slugs and unperturbed decided to re-sow more carrot seeds in the same place. As you may be aware we had exactly the same problem and after germinating all our seedlings disappeared once again.

No seedlings left by 26 May 2015

We were tempted to give up on carrots this year. By this time it was towards the end of June but I remembered that we once sowed carrots in the beginning of July in an attempt to avoid carrot fly. I seem to remember it didn’t work. That was before we discovered environmesh. Anyway we decided to have one more attempt at sowing which we did in a different part of the plot on 26 June. These germinated well and avoided any damage by slugs. The veggie mesh was laid over the soil rather than constructing a tent. These are the carrots we harvested on Saturday.

Our Third attempt took place on 26 June 2015

Carrots on  17 October 2015 when veggie mesh removed

The soil for growing carrots probably wasn't ideal for them. It was too firm and stony but that was down to the dry weather making soil preparation difficult. The result is the carrots have forked. Some carrots have also split which is probably down to irregular rainfall and my irregular watering regime.

Still the carrots we have managed to use have been very tasty. The fact that they've forked isn't really too much of an issue they just take a little more preparation time for the pan.

Definitely not our best carrot growing year.

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

At Last Some Sunshine for Our Late Veggies

We were treated to some long sunny spells on Monday. It made a welcome change from the dull and dreary weather of the last week. It was a little bit milder too as in the afternoon sunshine the temperature managed to reach 14.2°C or 57.6°F

In the middle of summer we had a rather long spell of dry weather. It meant planting in the plot was almost impossible. The ground resembled concrete and planting and sowing were delayed for a few weeks until some rain arrived. Eventually some brassicas and peas Onward joined our late sown carrots Early Nantes. In another vacant part of the plot we planted a few lettuce plants. These were a mixture of Tom Thumb, Red Fire and Little Gem.

To be honest we didn't really expect to harvest anything from these late sowings. To date we've managed to harvest one small head of calabrese Monclano a few small carrots and our lettuces are doing a good job of supplying some tasty leaves for salads and sandwiches. I think our peas are on borrowed time. They have flowered and produced a few small pods. We'll need some good weather for them to produce some peas.

Still it seems that sowing and planting past the recommended dates might keep us supplied with some fresh produce for a few more weeks especially if we avoid any night-time frosts.

For the record here’s the listing of our late sowing and planting times.

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

A Dull and Dreary Weekend

The miserable weather continued through the weekend. My weather station managed to record only 30 minutes of sunshine all weekend. The last seven days have resulted in a miserly three hours of sunshine.

Sunshine hours are recorded under BS Hours

The weather didn't stop us making the trip to the plot on Saturday. We changed our minds about harvesting a couple of quinces as a test. The fruit looked a nice golden colour so we decided to take the plunge and pick all the fruit on the tree. These have now joined our apples stored in the summerhouse. There's a few quinces that need to be used quickly and I'll make apple and quince crumble as soon as I can with them.

On Sunday we had a trip over to Lancashire to visit the East Lancashire Railway’s autumn gala. The weather there wasn't any better. It was misty over the top of the Pennines on the way to the gala.

Once there the weather wasn’t any different to home with heavy cloud and occasional light drizzle. It didn't really spoil our day but it wasn't a day for standing about waiting for trains. We kept on the move.

The steam locomotives seemed to want to add to the damp and misty weather by departing stations hidden in clouds of their own making.

Hopefully we will see a little bit more sunshine next week.

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