Wow - A Ripening Tomato

Saturday was much cloudier than the last few days but still pleasantly warm.

It was a return to the allotment after our few days away in Cumbria. Our plum crop this year is a complete failure although the tree does have around a dozen plums which I’ve been keeping my eyes on for any of the fruits to ripen. As soon as the fruits begin to turn the wasps are into them and with so little on the tree I didn’t want this to happen. In the middle of the afternoon as we made some coffee I checked and decided one plum was ready for the taste test. 

This Oullins gage was delicious. It didn’t make it to the weigh in as we ate it straight from the tree. Why can’t the supermarkets sell fruit this tasty?

As we were drinking our coffee I noticed something strange in the greenhouse. It looked like a glint of something reddish. I looked a little closer and sure enough we have a couple of Gardener’s Delight tomatoes actually turning red.

The first of our autumn raspberries are now ripening as the summer fruiting ones come to the end of their season. We have both red and yellow varieties.

The change hasn't affected the blackbirds though as they’ve moved seamlessly from eating summer to autumn fruiting berries. Red or yellow they don’t seem too fussed.

Summer’s Here

At last we've had a few decent days of summer weather with the temperatures into the twenties and no rain. The nights have been a little on the cool side and the mornings have had a bit of an autumnal feel to them.

We spent a few days away in Cumbria staying in Dufton a pretty little village close to Appleby. 

We made the short a short journey from Brow Farm, our comfortable Bed & Breakfast accommodation, to the National Trust property Acorn Bank to look around the gardens. The gardens were looking very pretty, probably helped by the wet weather this summer.

There’s also a large walled herb garden and orchard to visit and a pleasant walk through the trees, alongside Crowdundle Beck to visit the watermill which is currently undergoing restoration.

Back home it’s now time to get the rest of this year’s potatoes lifted and stored safely in the garage for use throughout the winter.

You Just Can’t Tell

By Sunday lunch time I thought I had today’s blog post sorted out. It’s a while since we had any Long Tailed Tits visiting the garden but over the last couple of day’s they've made brief visits to our fat balls. Doesn’t that sound awful. Anyhow here are a couple of pictures I managed to get.

At one stage we had eight or nine feeding and squabbling over the fat balls but it’s a bit difficult to get a picture in focus of them all feeding . Up to the middle of the afternoon the weather had been fine, mild again but with a bit more cloud that yesterday but not too bad at all. Then in the middle of the afternoon it changed dramatically. Thunder, lighting, hail and torrential rain arrived.

The rain came at a torrential rate for a few minutes, measuring at 138mm/hour or looked at another way all August’s rainfall in just 20 minutes. Fortunately it didn't last too long! In the end we finished up with 24.4mm moving Sunday into 5th place in the wettest day records.

Did I mention that the soil was drying out a little on the plot?

Potato Damage - Wireworm Perhaps?

Saturday was a lovely summer’s day, a bit of a rarity this year. Some good sunny spells and the temperature rose into the mid twenties.

On the plot I decided to lift some more potatoes probably not the best choice of job on a warm summer’s afternoon. The potatoes were in one of last year’s old strawberry beds and the predominant variety planted was Juliette with a few Winston’s planted to completely fill up the bed. I lifted the Juliette’s first and these had a decent crop of small to medium size tubers which were virtually free of any pest damage with no rotting from the wet weather. I was pleased with this crop which weighed in at 17.2kg or 37½ lbs.

There were just five roots of Winston to lift. These were all medium to very large potatoes but nearly all the potatoes had a few small holes in them, damage that I suspect was caused by wireworm. Below is a close up shot of the holes in the Winston potatoes.

What ever it was that caused this damage loved our Winston potatoes but left Juliette alone even though they were growing alongside each other in this bed. The vast majority of the Winston’s will be fine to use as even with the damaged parts of the tuber removed it will still leave plenty of useable potato. Well that’s what I’m hoping! They will of course have to be used first as damaged potatoes don’t store well.

Double Experiment

It was dry all day on Friday. The bright sunny start didn't last and it soon clouded over but it was a mild day with very little breeze.

We made the most of the fine weather to get our winter brassicas planted out on the plot. Besides experimenting on growing our own plants from seed this year we’ve decided to try planting through weed suppressant membrane to cut down on weeding and give the plants less growing competition. Part one of the experiment to grow some better plants than the ones we bought last year has gone well. Our experiment to use weed suppressant membrane to reduce weeding around our carrots seems to have gone well although we’ve still to harvest some carrots. The carrot tops look good though. So part two of the brassica experiment is under way.

As these plants will be in the ground through until spring next year there is a tendency for weeds to take over through the winter months when we generally make less visits to the plot. Hopefully this method will keep the weeding required down to a minimum.

This is how last years bed looked at the beginning of May this year. Most plants had seeded rather than produce any useful crops and they were inundated with weeds.

I’m looking to be able to re-use the membrane for several years to make the cost of using it more acceptable. Should it prove impossible to make use of this material over several years then I guess it will be back to conventional weeding.

Showered Off

Thursday was a big improvement on yesterday, at least we saw some sunshine. The day was spoilt by a couple of very heavy showers, one late afternoon and another late into the evening.

Now when earlier I say spoilt that’s not necessarily true in all cases. On the plot in the afternoon I was cultivating the bed for our young winter brassicas. This bed had been sown with green manure earlier in the year which had been cut down. The bed had been dug and prepared for our winter brassicas. The rain in early July however had compacted the soil into the consistency of concrete and there was no way we would be able to plant into soil in this condition. 

So the cultivator was back in business to turn over the ground. It’s been a couple of weeks since we had any appreciable rain and besides being like concrete the ground was surprising dry. So in some ways the couple of heavy showers might do the bed some good.  Just got finished as the first heavy shower of the day arrived to curtail any more allotmenting for the day. All we have to do now is get our young plants into the ground.

Just a note to say that the long grass visible on the unkempt allotment in the background is not ours and is awaiting new plotters to take it on. 

Better Cauliflower Plants

Wednesday wasn't a great start to August. It was cloudy and although we only managed a few light showers, the dark heavy clouds contained a threat of a real downpour all day. It was a little milder than the last few days with the temperature managing to just make it to 20°C.

Last year I ordered my winter brassicas from a couple of well known seed companies. These arrived early last August and I wasn’t at all impressed by the quality of plants supplied.

Above are the plants I received last August which I transplanted into modules before finally moving them into the allotment.

I decided that this year I would try to raise my own plants and see if I could do any better. It’s certainly been difficult going with the very wet weather, the slugs and the vagaries of knowing the best brand of seed compost to use. I’ve been using New Horizon peat free multi-purpose this year for both sowing the seeds and later transplanting into modules. I’ve been feeding every time I’ve watered with liquid Miracle-Gro to supplement the nutrient level of the compost. This was a tip from the TV programme Beechgrove Garden from their compost trials.

My seedlings have grown well and are ready for transplanting into the plot once the bed is finally prepared. This variety is Aalsmeer sown on 17 June and transplanted into modules on 26 June. They should be providing us with cauliflowers sometime between May and June next year.

A Poor Finish to the Month

Tuesday wasn't very good for July. It was dull all day without any hint of sunshine with light rain at times throughout the day. It was cool with the thermometer just managing 15°C.

Quickly looking at the month’s weather statistics it’s been a wet month as I’m sure everybody is already aware. In the end we had 106.4mm (4.2”) which is 2½ times our normal amount for July.

Temperature wise it’s been a cold month with an average temperature of 15.5°C which is 1.8°C above and 4.2°C below the coldest and hottest July’s in the last 100 years.

It’s also been another poor month for sunshine as the chart below shows.

We've had a couple of very poor months in a row for sunshine with June only producing around half the amount we might expect and July maybe two thirds. Perhaps August will improve things. 

Despite the poor weather we made an afternoon visit to the plot, mainly to water the greenhouse tomatoes. We managed to pick our first few French beans “Tendergreen” and our courgettes had plenty of small fruits to pick especially our free seeds of “Tondo di Piacenza”. Is this the start of our usual courgette glut? At one time I didn’t think we were going to have any courgettes at all let alone a glut.

Our full list of harvesting in July can be found here.