A Bit of a Nerve

Saturday was a decent day with some sunny periods. It was mild for a change too. After all last week’s rain we decided it would be too wet to do much on the plot.

 

It seems The Potato Council are blaming the poor potato harvest on gardeners and allotmenteers who grow their own. Nothing to do with the wet weather and cold conditions.

Click on image to read full article

 

For the second year in a row our potatoes weren’t affected by blight. Our potatoes were lifted and put into winter storage by the end of August. A few stragglers were lifted early in September but there was virtually no difference in the final weights of this year’s and the previous year’s crops. I can understand the farmers problems where fields of late potatoes are under water and crops are reduced. I certainly wouldn’t want to leave my crop in the ground until October although I know this is the traditional time for lifting potatoes.

Our potatoes were lifted in August from this bed which is now planted up with a green manure crop to improve the soil condition for next year.

　

Wet in North Yorkshire

We spent a few days in Stokesley in North Yorkshire travelling back home yesterday morning. There was plenty of rain whilst we were there but fortunately for us most of it seemed to be overnight.

The talk there was that the farmers are unable to get their winter crops into the ground as it’s too wet. Having seen the state of some of the fields I can certainly understand where they’re coming from.

 

Mid morning heading back home through the Vale of York it was still misty in places but the mist cleared as we headed south.

We’ve had a decent drop of rain at home too but it’s also been windy with a gust of 28 mph recorded at 12:45 on Tuesday that’s the strongest gust recorded this year. Not really what we expect at this time of year, but there again who knows what to expect this year.

 

Frost Damage

After a couple of days enjoying the local countryside we made a visit to the plot mainly with the intention of getting our winter onions planted. It was another cold night with the temperature down to a chilly 1.9°C. The first thing we checked on at the plot was for frost damage. The dahlias looked in good condition as we approached and I always think of these being the first plants to suffer from frost damage.

Next to the dahlias are some sunflowers and our wild flower mixture. These weren't showing any signs of frost damage either.

It was a different picture on other parts of the plot. Our courgette plants had certainly suffered from the couple of chilly nights and have decided enough is enough.

I don’t think they've any intention of producing more courgettes this season and the remains can be removed to the compost heap. Not far from these courgettes our every bearing strawberry plants, Flamenco, still have some flowers which appear to have escaped any frost damage as the centres of the flowers haven’t turned black.

We did get round to planting our onions which Sue will be covering in a blog post later in the week. Next to the new onion bed are some nasturtiums which had self sown and are really weeds but have been producing some colour and providing food for any late butterflies that are about. Rather a surprise then but these “weeds” have just been caught by the frost. Who would have thought it!

Almost Zero

It was cold on Saturday morning with the temperature down to 1.3°C at 07:00 in the morning. As it didn't warm up too much all day it produced our coldest day of autumn 2012 with an average temperature for the day of only 6.1°C.

We had a trip to Wensleydale. It was a pleasant enough autumn day in the Dales with a reasonable amount of sunshine. 

Bright After Over Night Rain

It poured down during the night but cleared up nicely through the day with plenty of sunny intervals. It was blustery though. We had a walk alongside the Calder and Hebble Navigation in the pleasant afternoon sunshine.

If you’re a keen watcher of my online weather station you may have noticed some disruption yesterday. In its wisdom Windows Firewall decided it didn't like me FTP’ing files. Briefly all the pictures and files on my weather web site are automatically uploaded to the web from my computer by a process called FTP or file transfer protocol. Not only did Windows decide it didn't want me to do this it also deleted the list of files that are uploaded to the web by this process. I think I've sorted out most of the files but I’m sure there’ll be some I've missed which will take me a little while to sort out. Fortunately this doesn't affect any of the actual weather data records.

Another Poor Day

Thursday was dull and cool almost a repeat of yesterday. Rain had been forecast from early afternoon but it didn't arrive until early evening with the heaviest of the rain reserved for over night into Friday morning.

As the weather wasn’t too good I decided to use our recently harvested quinces to make an apple and quince compote. I’d forgotten just how awkward quinces are to prepare. Although I’ve read that they can be difficult to peel I don’t have a problem with that it’s removing the core that causes me a problem. 　

It’s just like preparing an apple until it comes to removing the core. Removing the core is easy with an apple but very difficult with a quince. Once peeled and quartered it has all the appearance of an apple until that point. 　The outer casing to the core is hard so it’s like trying to remove the stone from an unripe peach or nectarine. I find it easiest to cut the flesh away from the core.

This might seem like a lot of effort for what seems to be an unloved and difficult to obtain fruit but having eaten quince for the first time last year it’s a wonderful tasty and aromatic fruit.

There’s more about our quinces on Sue’s blog.

Lots of Late Tomatoes

Wednesday wasn’t a very good day weather wise. It was cool and cloudy all day.

Our tomatoes have surprised us by ripening well in the greenhouse despite the chilly weather of late. It’s resulted in us having lots of late tomatoes to use. As Wednesday wasn’t too brilliant outside I decided to make some more tomato chutney and even had some tomatoes left to convert into a sauce to be frozen and used through the winter months.

 

This is a real bonus as I thought at one stage we would be lucky to get any tomatoes at all let alone having enough to make chutney with unless of course it was green tomato chutney.

Second Cropping Plum Tree!

After yesterday’s misty gloomy day it was bright sunshine for most of Tuesday. Once again though it was cold overnight with the temperature falling to 2.4°C.

 

We made an afternoon visit to the plot to do some more tidying up. It was a lovely afternoon feeling warm in the sunshine. We’d done our bit of tidying, digging up the sweet corn stems and clearing away the runner bean wigwams. We’d enjoyed a coffee with a plot neighbour and harvested one or two bits and pieces detailed here. Then when I was barrowing the last of the weeds to the weed compost heap and passing our Victoria Plum tree I noticed some ripe fruits.

This was rather strange as we finished picking our Victoria plums several weeks ago. Now I can remember that when the tree was in fruit it produced a few flowers. I thought it was odd at the time for the tree to be well into fruit and have new flowers too. Like everything else this year I put it down to the weather. Obviously these late flowers have gone on to produce an extremely late but very welcome second crop of plums. Certainly none of our trees, to the best of my knowledge, has ever done this before.