A Little Bit of Sunshine - Eventually

Monday started off dull, misty and cold. Whilst we probably just avoided a frost with an overnight low of 3.7°C it was pretty cold all morning. The mist hung on into the afternoon.

 

So October is carrying on where September left off with some cool weather for early autumn. As it wasn’t too pleasant outside I decided to update my records for autumn 2012 and see how it compared with past seasons. At the moment if we consider September, October and November as the three autumn months 2012 is certainly on the cold side.

The table above shows the warmest, coldest, and expected autumn temperatures for the 09 October for each individual record. It’s easy to see that we’re much nearer the temperatures for the coldest autumn in 50 years than we are to last year’s average or indeed the expected average. The temperature in the table is the average daily temperature for the 39 days between 01 September and 09 October for each autumn season. Could we be in for a strange October in which the temperature increases as we head through the month towards winter rather than falling as expected?

 

Sunny and Cold

Sunday was a lovely sunny day and for a few hours in the afternoon the temperature wasn’t too bad. The first week of October has been generally cold for us and the forecast doesn’t show any improvement with the temperature hardly expected to reach double figures in the next week. This start to the month puts us close to the coldest daily average temperature for October in 100 years which was in 1919.

 

Last year at this time we were still enjoying that very mild ending to September and first week or so of October. No such luck this year. Do hope this isn’t an omen of the winter to come.

Making a Late Show

Saturday didn’t live up to the forecast. It was a mixture of sunny spells but with some very dark ominous clouds around for much of the day although in the end we didn’t have any rain. It was cold overnight into Sunday with the temperature falling to 3.7°C.

Despite the cool start to October we’ve still some flowers in the garden refusing to accept that autumn has well and truly arrived and are still putting on a display worthy of summer.

 

Very Sour Cranberries

There was some overnight rain amounting to 3.8mm with it remaining dry for the rest of the day. It wasn’t too pleasant a day as there were plenty of clouds about and it was pretty cool. The wind was strong to gale force in the afternoon.

 

Yesterday’s harvest from the plot included a few cranberries.

This little lot weighed in at 181 gms. I decided to convert them into a compote to use with some yogurt but I wasn’t too sure about how much sugar to add. I reckon for fruit that might be considered a bit on the sour side half the fruit’s weight in sugar is usually plenty adding considerable less for sweeter fruits.

 

After adding the sugar the cranberries were warmed steadily to allow the sugar to dissolve and the berries to soften as they were fairly solid when picked. Once they had cooled a little I had a little taster and it was difficult to imagine any sugar had been added at all. They were still really tart so I decided to go for jam making levels of sugar adding half the weight of the fruit again. The berries were warmed again just to dissolve the and the taste test repeated. They tasted better but I’m sort of glad we haven’t lots of berries to use up. Perhaps we picked them a little too early?

 

Autumn Update On Green Manure

Plenty of sunshine again on Thursday but there were some hefty showers about in the afternoon one of which we were treated to down on the plot.

 

I thought it might be a good time to report on the progress of my experimental green manure crops. As I mentioned on yesterday’s blog I haven’t managed to get any red clover to germinate in three separate sowing through summer. On the other hand winter tares and phacelia have been much more successful.

 

I sowed my first bed of winter tares on 25 July once our early potatoes had been lifted. It had germinated by the 13 August although it didn’t appear as thick as I imagined it would be when I sowed the seeds. I was in two minds whether to sow some extra seed amongst the emerging shoots but in the end decided against. I assumed as I’d followed the sowing density on the packet I ought to see what would happen.

By the end of August the winter tares were starting to thicken up but it still looked a little bit sparse to me. I was a little bit surprised that it wasn’t getting much competition from germinating weed seeds but that seemed to be the case.

Now by early October it’s filled out well and I can see that I would just have wasted seed had I scattered extra in late August to make up for what looked like rather poor germination.

It will be interesting to see how this over winters. As this green manure is a nitrogen fixer this bed will be planted up with brassicas next season to make best use of this. This may fit in nicely with my four yearly crop rotation system on this part of the plot. Winter tares should be dug in before flowering but I’ll just have to leave some to see what the flowers are like to satisfy my curiosity. 　

Preparing for Winter Onions

Wednesday was a pleasant enough day so I thought I’d better prepare a bed on the plot for our winter onions. The original plan was to have a green manure crop to dig in prior to planted our onion sets but the red clover failed to germinate.

 

My first job was to strim the grass around the bed. The grass hasn’t stopped growing all summer due to the wet weather. The ground was still wet from last week’s rain so digging over the soil was out of the question. Perhaps it was just as well the clover hadn’t germinated.

The wheelbarrow was still half full of water from last week’s wet weather. As the bed couldn’t be dug over I decided to remove the largest weeds and to then see if I could use the cultivator to loosen up the top couple of inches of the soil enough to allow the onions to be pushed in.

This worked quite well. After a couple of passes with the cultivator the soil didn’t look too bad. I sprinkled on fish, blood and bone fertiliser and then used the cultivator again to work this into the surface of the soil.

 

We originally planned to re-use the weed suppressant fabric used for our carrots for this bed of onions but unfortunately it just wasn’t anywhere near big enough. I had one last length of membrane left and decided to use that on this bed. After all these onions will be planted in October and remain in the ground until June or even July next year. That means lots of weeding would be needed for this crop.

It was a little bit too breezy for laying the membrane down but a few well placed bricks helped the job along. The long edges are held down by soil. We still have to decide the best way of cutting the fabric to plant our onions 　but we don’t need to make a decision until our sets arrive.

A Red Tomato Glut

Tuesday wasn’t a brilliant day by any means. Whilst we didn’t actually have much rain it seemed wet all day and it didn’t seem like a day for visiting the plot. As you can see no serious rain but well spread throughout the day.

Believe it or not after all our problems of waiting weeks for our tomatoes to ripen they’ve all decided to turn together so we’ve a mini glut. I decided it would be an afternoon in the kitchen and set about to make some tomato chutney, red tomato chutney. I decided to use the recipe from the BBC Good Food Guide. I stuck to the recipe as near as possible. My onion was a little too large but it all went into the pot.

Now it doesn’t look anything like as good as it tastes. Perhaps it will look more appetising once it’s put into some jars. However it has been taste tested and passed with flying colours. I’ve still some tomatoes left so I might have to make some tomato sauce too. I don’t think I’m going to have to bother with green tomato chutney with the pace that our tomatoes are turning at the moment.

First Sweet Corn

Monday started off a sunny autumnal day but clouded over and drizzled late morning and into the early afternoon before clearing up to become dry and sunny as the day had begun.

We were just about out of fresh vegetables so a trip down to the plot was needed. It was drizzling a little when I set off. Besides needing some vegetables it was my first visit since last week’s heavy rain so I was interested to see how our crops had managed.

I was pleasantly surprised as we had lots of raspberries ready for picking. I’d assumed these would be damaged by the heavy rain but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Both our red "Joan J" and yellow "All Gold" had plenty of large undamaged berries a bonus at this time of year especially after the bad weather of last week. "All Gold" obviously got the message that it was heading for the compost heap if it didn’t get its act together. I think it’s earned a reprieve.

 

I picked our first two cobs of sweet corn for the season. When picked the cobs looked OK but would we have lots of sweet corn kernels inside.

I decided it was about time to see if our carrots "Flakkee" had performed as well as "Early Nantes". I lifted about a fork’s width and a bit. The soil was wet, claggy and sticking to the carrots so although it goes against my better judgement I gave them a quick wash under the tap to see if the carrots were nibbled or damaged by carrot root fly.

Satisfied that they were in good condition after their quick wash I gave some beetroot a quick rinse too as that came up caked in soil. It’s much easier to remove the worst of the soil under the tap at the allotment than in the kitchen sink.

 

We had the sweet corn for dinner and it was delicious. One cob had been very well pollinated and one not so well but if all our cobs are as good as these at least we will have some sort of harvest from the plants this year.