A Gardener's Weather Diary

Thursday, 5 September 2013

Mini Heatwave Continues

Our early September mini heatwave continued on Wednesday with the temperature making it up to 25.2°C in the afternoon. There was a little bit more sunshine than the previous couple of days. The forecast is for it all to come to a sudden end with heavy rain on Friday and continuing into the weekend.

The rain will be most welcome on the plot and garden as they're both very dry and in need of a good watering.

Whilst the tomatoes in our home greenhouse have been a bit of a disaster this year as most of the fruits have suffered from blossom end rot our grape vine Himrod has gone through its usual summer routine of producing lots of bunches of small sweet juicy grapes. The first bunch was picked today and it didn't disappoint.

A little bit more steam locomotive nostalgia is taking place in Grantham this weekend. 4468 Mallard the world's fastest ever steam locomotive is returning to the district where it broke the record on 03 July 1938. That record top speed of 126mph (203km/h) after passing through Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 3 July 1938 still stands. 4468 Mallard will be on display near Grantham station on 7 and 8 September, as part of the 75th anniversary celebrations of the record being set. The steam locomotive is normally kept at the National Railway Museum in York but I couldn't resist the temptation to capture some photographs of Mallard as it made its journey from the National Railway Museum to Grantham.

Wednesday, 4 September 2013

Greengage Fest

Summer returned on Tuesday as the wind finally dropped. There was more cloud than sunshine but the temperature managed a very warm 24.2°C.

We'd tested our greengages and decided that although they were still hard and green they were certainly ready for picking. I decided to harvest them today and decided that it would be worthwhile taking my step ladder down to the plot to harvest as many as I could reach. I have to be honest I didn't think there were that many to pick and we'd probably get a couple of punnets from each tree. I decided to do a little bit of tidying up first and even found time to go chasing this “Speckled Wood” butterfly around the plot.

I thought it must be rare as I hadn't seen one before but apparently it’s not. Eventually I got round to picking greengages.

They don’t really look ready for picking do they? It’s so difficult to believe just how sweet these firm green fruits are. I know from past experience that they can be left a little longer on the tree until the fruit develops a red tinge around its stalk. The trouble is at this stage the gages split acting as a magnet for every wasp within miles and the fruits and tree become infested making it not very pleasant to pick them. So the decision was made to pick them at this stage.

I was amazed at how many of these small fruits were on each of our trees as I kept on filling punnet after punnet. In the end I picked 9 punnets from each tree which when weighed up came to 9.9kg from “Mannings” and 9.5kg from “Reinne Claude”. There’s still a few gages left at the very top of the trees but I'm not risking life and limb to pick those. I’m more than happy with my 19.5kg and the wasps can help themselves to those that remain.

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

An Improvement of Sorts

Monday was a better day, much warmer than Sunday but still windy.

I ventured down to the plot in the afternoon to harvest some more potatoes and check for plant damage from yesterday’s gales. Fortunately the damage was minimal. One of our cardoon plants had already suffered some wind damage and it’s now been finished off.

Even though the flowers are laid flat on the grass the bees carry on as though nothing has happened. Our other cardoon plant just a few metres away has escaped undamaged from the gales. It must be slightly protected from the strong westerly winds by our neighbour’s shed.

I managed to finish digging up our main bed potatoes. Last year I sowed some green manure to follow on from lifting potatoes and I’d been wondering whether or not to repeat this sowing again as it did a good job of suppressing weeds all winter and early spring. The condition of the ground has saved me any more wondering. The soil is really dry and has dug with large rock hard lumps. There is no way I can sow any seeds in this bed until it’s had plenty of rain on it and can be cultivated properly.

Besides clearing this bed of its potato crop I couldn't resist a little bit more harvesting. Our later plums Marjories Seedling and Victoria are just starting to turn. Lots of the fruit on these trees doesn’t seem to have formed correctly, perhaps because they were very late into flower and some of the fruits have pesky plum moth maggots inside. So far our greengages appear to be free of this pest.

Monday, 2 September 2013

Blimey It’s Only the First

Sunday was the first day of autumn and it’s started as though it means business. It was cold with a gale force wind. A gust of 24mph was our strongest since 24 May 2013.

Through much of August our regular gardens birds seemed a little bit scarce but over the last few days they have returned in large numbers. They are managing to get through 500gms of standard bird seed, as well as tucking into golden chorus, peanuts, niger seed, black sunflowers, sunflower hearts, suet pellets, and fat balls.

Sunday, 1 September 2013

What a Contrast

There was a real contrast between the weather on Saturday compared with the first day of the month. Saturday was cool and breezy with the overnight temperature down to a pretty cool 6.7°C and a high of just 17.7°C. Contrast that with the first day of August which was a scorching hot 31.1°C and corresponding overnight low of 17.1°C.

In the end hot and cold really did cancel each other out and the average temperature for the month equalled the long term average.

Rainfall on the other hand was well below expected with only 38.2mm against a long term average of 46.7mm.

So summer for 2013 has come to its meteorological end and it’s turned out to be a warmer than an average summer and the warmest since 2006. That probably doesn't give a true representation as 2006 (17.23°C) was the fifth warmest summer over the last 300 years and 2013 (16.85) will slot in at around fifteenth position.

It’s rather puzzling as to why the plot and garden is so dry as we've had about 85% of our expected rainfall over the summer period with 123.0mm falling against a long term average of 145mm. It’s obviously been the wrong sort of rain but it doesn't change the fact that the plot is very dry and in need of some water.

Saturday, 31 August 2013

A Harvesting Afternoon

Once again it was mostly cloudy but we did have some sunny spells and it felt very warm in any sunshine.

We spent all afternoon harvesting on the plot. We didn't go with the intention of just harvesting but with such a variety of fruit and vegetables to pick we just couldn't help ourselves. There’s no point going to the trouble of growing it if you can't be bothered to pick it.

Not a bad afternoon’s work. We even managed to pick a few runner beans from Lady Di and St George before summer turns into autumn. The stars of this little bounty are undoubtedly the greengages. We haven’t so many but the sweetness is unbelievable coming from such a small green fruit.

These are our greengages, a variety called “Reine Claude”. The only problem is deciding when greengages are ready to eat. These still look very green and are quite firm to the touch. I did cheat before picking and we had a couple of testers with our afternoon coffee. They were absolutely superb.

I’m expecting a good carrot crop this year if our early “pullings” are anything to go by. So far we've only tried the Early Nantes variety which have produced some very good sized carrots.

They've had the taste test which is excellent. These are as lifted without any washing or sprucing up. The soil is very dry and the carrots have come out without any soil needing to be washed off for kitchen use.

Our first few Victoria plums are in the harvest picture too.

Our Oullins gage cropping has just about finished but it’s provided us with 33kg of plums most of which have gone into the freezer.

I might try some of the Himrod grapes in our home greenhouse today and see if they’re sweet enough to eat. Gardening can be tough at times.

Friday, 30 August 2013

Too Quick

Thursday continued the mild but cloudy theme.

We decided on a trip to RSPB Old Moor to see if we could spot any new birds. When we arrive it’s normal for any “star species” to do a disappearing act for the day. We did actually spot a couple of birds we hadn't seen before but these were at the extreme range of our spotting scope well out of the photographic range of our cameras.

I know I should be videoing birds at an RSPB reserve but I couldn't help focusing on a hare. Whilst I was concentrating on the hare a stoat made an appearance, a very brief appearance at that.

The stoat appears in just 3 frames of my video and my camera takes 25 frames per second so this little stoat was in and out of shot in 0.12 seconds. If you haven't spotted it have a look in the top left hand corner of the picture.

With a little bit of cropping and adjusting this is the best picture I can get. It’s the only shot of a stoat I’ve got.

Wonder if I’ll get a picture of a kingfisher one day. We saw two on our visit today but neither wanted to be photographed. Another time perhaps.

Thursday, 29 August 2013

Just Made It This Summer

Much more cloud about on Wednesday and a little bit cooler but still a very nice day.

At last I picked some runner beans. We're growing St. George, Enorma and Desiree and all three varieties have been very slow to produce beans. In July’s hot weather they came to what seemed like a total standstill and refused to grow. Meteorologically summer comes to an end in 3 days time so we've only just managed a picking before summer comes to an end.

These are from our wigwam of Desiree a white flowered variety. The plants look really well with plenty of flowers and young beans to come so we're expecting to be able to stock up our freezer supplies before any cold weather kills off the plants.