Thursday, 03 August 2017
Below Par July
For us July certainly wasn't anything special. It consisted of one hot day early on in the month with the remainder of the month around average or even a bit below.
Average July Temperatures For Ossett (UK)
As you can see from the table above July's average monthly temperature was a little below average based on the last few years and it ranked fifth warmest out of eight.
We also had below average rainfall in July. The first half of the month was dry with no rainfall to speak of but the second half was much wetter with some amount of rainfall almost every day.
August has begun much like July ended with lots of very light showers, breezy, and temperatures around average for the beginning of August.
August is traditionally my month for lifting most of our potatoes. Usually by the middle of the month most of the potato haulms will be turning yellow. I'll start lifting the potatoes as leaving them in the ground any longer will increase their chances of them being damaged by pests.
Two rows of Kestrel potatoes, in the bed above, had already died back and were lifted during the last week of July. The dry weather had substantially reduced their yield which was only half the amount of last year. Last year was the first time we'd grown Kestrel and they produced an excellent crop weighing in at 19.4kg (43lb) of completely pest free potatoes which we thought tasted good too. We thought they earned their place on this year's list of choice varieties and although they have only produced half the weight of last year's crop, with 9.2kg or 20lb, we're putting this down to the exceptionally dry spell of weather. Once again the potatoes are completely pest free. I think we'll be trying them again next year.
Potato - "Kestrel"
It will be interesting to see how our other potatoes have coped with the very dry conditions from planting time at the beginning of April through to late June.
Friday, 04 August 2017
Wrong Month's Started
Thursday was windy with the occasional very light shower. Any rain wasn't heavy enough to wet the ground as the showers were quickly blown away in the gale force wind. It certainly wasn't much like an August day in the height of summer.
RSPB - Fairburn Ings
We visited RSPB Fairburn Ings in the afternoon and if you could find somewhere sheltered from the wind in was quite pleasant.
Although we've had un-August like weather to begin the month we have picked the first tomatoes of the summer from our greenhouse at home. As is usual for us these were Sungold which always is the first of our varieties to ripen.
We are lettuce free at the moment as my successional sowing of lettuce and salad leaves has failed again this year. However, our experiment of trying to grow watercress in our pond has been very successful, in fact too successful, as the watercress is doing its best to take over the pond.
It looks like some will soon have to be pulled out and composted.
The forecast doesn't seem to suggest that summer will be restarting any time soon.
Sunday, 06 August 2017
Not Ready Yet!
As forecast the rather poor August weather continues. For the last three days it's been windy although Saturday did have a decent amount of sunshine and out of the breeze it felt pleasantly warm.
Our soft fruit picking season is slowing down now. We've still got blackberries to pick but our autumn raspberries have been refurbished this year so we're not expecting much fruit from them this year. It's about time our tree fruit took over the production line and our plum "Oullins Gage" has stepped up to the mark. We've picked a few punnets of delicious plums over the last week or so but Saturday saw a bumper haul of just over 7kg or 16 lb.
Some of the apples, of unknown variety, which form our apple hedge on the allotment look ready for picking so we decided to try one on Saturday afternoon.
The resulting taste test confirmed that although it looked ready for picking, and it parted from the tree without too much trouble, it wasn't ready for eating. Inside the pips were still white instead of dark brown which I consider a sign that a bit more ripening is required.
Our apples weren't the only fruits we picked and tested for ripeness this week. We also picked a nectarine and a peach as they too looked ready for picking.
Peach - "Avalon Pride"
Nectarine - "Fantasia"
The taste test for both the nectarine, peach and apple were the same. They all need a little longer on the tree to ripen a little bit more.
We made a short video clip of us picking a peach and nectarine for taste testing which I've included below.