A Gardener's Weather Diary

Wednesday, 24 December 2014

Christmas Vegetables

Tuesday was another very mild December day, at least the strong to gale force winds of the last week abated to produce just a very breezy day. The rain was just about holding off so we decided on a trip to the plot to harvest some vegetables for Christmas dinner.

After a few years of having a complete crop failure with sprouts we've grown this variety called Crispus, a club root resistant type, for the last couple of years with much better results.

We also managed to harvest a few more seasonal vegetables too which looked pretty good once they’d had a quick wash. The savoy at the top of the picture is Resolution another first for us this year. We’re hoping that this variety along with a variety called Wintessa are going to give us savoys to harvest over the next couple of months.

Tuesday, 23 December 2014

Mild and Windy Weather Continues

Monday came very close to being our mildest December day as the temperature managed to make it to 14.0°C. As it turned out it was our mildest December day since Boxing Day in 2011 when the temperature managed 14.2°C.

It did manage to produce the mildest average temperature for December though as the overnight temperature only fell back to 11.7°C giving a daily average of 12.6°C just above the previous highest of 12.3°C on that Boxing Day in 2011.

The wind continued to blow and December 2014 has easily become the windiest December of the last few years.

The wind resulted in lots of flights from Leeds and Bradford Airport being diverted to other airports around the country. This flight from London Heathrow attempted a landing before aborting the attempt and heading off to Manchester.

Monday, 22 December 2014

Rubbish Collection

The weather has remained remarkably mild over the weekend but we've had hardly any let up from the continuous battering from gale force winds. The last few Decembers have been windy but this December is now the windiest. So far it hasn't had the strongest gusts of wind it’s just been very persistent. The forecast is for a windy week to come.

Our council collect plastic recycling every couple of weeks but their method of collecting isn't very good especially in windy weather. On Monday morning our front garden was littered with plastic pop and milk bottles. Our collecting crate was full but fortunately I have a spare that was once deposited in our garden on a previous windy collection day.

The council have been on their round and emptied the crates and look what we've now been left with. It looks like someone’s old waste bin which has finished up being blown into our garden. Perhaps it was left out to be recycled as plastic rubbish who knows. All I know is that it’s now my rubbish and I’ll have to get rid of it.

The council are talking about changing their collection method but they've been talking about it for years. We live in hope.

Saturday, 20 December 2014

Freezing Gale Force Winds

If the only thing you consider for Friday is the temperature, which managed around 8.0°C during the daytime, then you’d think it was a decent sort of a day for December. We even had a few sunny spells thrown in too. The only problem was the freezingly cold gale force wind that blew for most of the day and was at it worst around teatime.

Recent Decembers have all been windy and we have to go back to the bitterly cold December of 2010 to find a calm month.

I'm hoping that our broadband issues have now been sorted out. We've had to invest in a broadband extender kit so that our signal can be transferred around the house using our electrical wiring circuit rather than me having to thread Ethernet cables around the house and through various walls. After a bit of a false start it seems to be working well.

The final test is adding a photo to a blog post. Yesterday our wireless connection behaved a bit like an old dial up connection where you watched a picture appear gradually line by line if you were lucky. It’s now back up to speed and I'm hoping it’s going to stay that way.

Friday, 19 December 2014

Broadband Issues

The last couple of days have been pretty mild for December but that’s all the weather’s had going for it. Along with the mildness it been wet and windy and not very pleasant at all. That cold crisper winter weather is much preferred.

We've had some broadband problems this week so if you follow my live online weather details you may have noticed some interruptions to the data. For most of one day we had no broadband connection at all which somehow all of its own accord returned the following day. The broadband engineer has visited and rectified the problem. All well and good you might think apart from the fact that our broadband router has now been relocated as far away from our PC’s as it’s possible to be. Our wireless signal is almost none existent so I've now got to fathom out how to get our PC’s connected to our broadband router.

Superfast it is not!!

I've given up trying to add a photo to this post as it isn't possible with the current broadband speed I've got. You can only spend so much time watching little blue circles go round and around.

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Feeding Time

Sunday and Monday weren't too bad for December and so far winter is progressing nicely without any serious weather issues. We had some wintry sunshine on both days and although the daytime high was only around 6°C, about the expected value for the middle of December, we avoided any more overnight frosts.

Even if we don’t have any frosts the garden birds are eagerly waiting for me to put out fresh supplies of seed and suet pellets each morning. Last year we had a male blackbird, affectionately known as “Hoppy” due to his leg injury, who was usually first to the bird table. This year it’s a female blackbird who’s taken on the first to the table role.

She’ll happily perch in our magnolia tree no more than an arm’s length away from me as the food is spread on the bird table and move in for the kill as soon as I turn away.

She has to be quick off the mark because it’s not long before the heavy mob move in taking over the whole bird table for a few minutes scattering food in all directions. Once they've moved off a few other birds get their chance to enjoy a little breakfast.

Whilst there’s not much to do outside I'm going to try to manoeuvre the bird table and my camera into slightly better positions for taking photos. I'm not expecting for one moment the birds won’t notice the changes but whilst I’d like to improve the photo opportunities I don't want to stop the birds getting their morning feed.

Sunday, 14 December 2014

Coldest Day Since March 2014

Friday and Saturday have been a cold couple of days. Both days had some good sunny spells but only enough to lift the temperature fractionally above 5°C.

Overnight Friday into Saturday the temperature dropped to -1.4°C our coldest night, or should I say early morning because that low temperature was recorded at 08:40, since 24 March 2014 when the temperature fell to -2.4°C.

I do hope our plants are surviving in the cold greenhouse. When I took this picture the temperature in the greenhouse was down to -1.3°C very little different to that outside. Perhaps that covering of fleece will make all the difference.

Friday, 12 December 2014

Lucky Break

Thursday was cold and showery with some sunny intervals. Over the last few days we've had lots of heavy showers and these are starting to add up to a considerable amount of rainfall.