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Sunday 01 July 2012
A Visiting Woodpecker?
Sunday and the start of a new month didn’t bring a great improvement in the weather with a cool and cloudy day which threatened rain all day although it never actually arrived.
We very rarely see a Woodpecker in the garden but today was one of those days.
We think that this is a juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker. It was making valiant attempts to get at the fat balls with limited success.
I’d only just replaced the outer cover to the feeder as we’ve a couple of starling families who go through half a dozen fat balls in no time at all. The outer cover doesn’t stop them but it does slow their feasting down a little. I’m hoping that it hasn’t put our woodpecker off making more visits.
The pictures above are images grabbed from my video camera and the full length film is included below.
Monday 02 July 2012
Harvesting Rained Off
Monday was miserable, although I suppose it was only continuing the trend. It was dull and promised rain all morning. The rain however stayed away and we decided to visit the plot in the afternoon, at least to water the greenhouse tomatoes if nothing else. Watering done we decided to do a little harvesting.
Of course no sooner had we started than the drizzly rain became a little heavier. We stuck it out for a few minutes before deciding to cut our loses and do some harvesting another day.
I did dig our first root of “Vales Emerald” potato. I thought I was being a little optimistic as I was late planting all our potatoes this year. A potted history for “Vales Emerald” goes like this:
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Planted 20th April
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First signs of shoots through soil by 16th May
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On flower 26th June
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First harvest 2nd July weight on one root 1.1kg
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This is the first time we’ve grown “Vales Emerald” and as you can image it was new potatoes for dinner. They tasted really delicious with a good new potato flavour going really well with the small picking of broad beans “Witkiem Manita” that we also harvested today. On taste alone I think we’ll be keeping this variety on the growing list for next year.
Tuesday 03 July 2012
Mollusc Menace
Tuesday started off with some promise - there was pleasant morning sunshine and temperatures were mild. It didn’t last and by lunchtime it clouded over giving us a very dull afternoon and evening.
Most of my winter brassicas have been moved to the cold frame to grow on before planting out in the plot. My main problem is keeping them safe from marauding molluscs.
These two pictures show what happens to plants around the cold frame when left unprotected. The left-over tub of hostas on the left is almost totally devoured and some spare pea plants on the right completely devastated with not a single leaf left. So adequate measures are a must.
The floor of the cold frame is covered with a layer of copper impregnated matting which is supposed to be a deterrent as it gives slugs a tiny electric shock as they slime their way over it. In our case plenty of molluscs are happy to cross this for a meal. As the cold frame is sealed around the base as well as possible I've scattered a few slug pellets over the matting.
Old upturned florist’s buckets are then used to support large plastic trays which hold four standard sized seed trays. I’ve found out the hard way that this hasn’t formed an impenetrable barrier for molluscs so this year some extra measures are being introduced.
Each upturned bucket has a further two mollusc rings, a copper ring which was already in place from last year and an addition ring of tree band grease which I’m hoping will remain sticky for the rest of the summer.
With a frame full of lettuce seedlings and winter brassicas I’m hoping these plants survive to produce good plants for the plot in a few weeks time. Just in case you think there is an awful lot of brassicas you’re right I’m planning on sharing them with a gardening friend.
Wednesday 04 July 2012
Well Spaced Showers
Wednesday was mild with well spaced out showers. By well spaced out I mean it just started to dry up and tempt me outside when another shower arrived and dashed any chance of a visit to the plot.
I described my efforts to stop slugs and snails reaching my plants in the cold frame yesterday. I was sure some “Webbs Wonderful” lettuces had germinated but this seemed not to be the case when I looked today. On closer inspection it looked like little seedlings may have been nibbled away. It was difficult to be sure. They may have just given up in the soddened compost they were trying to grow in. As the cold frame is well protected from wildlife I decided to use a few slug pellets to see if they would slow down escaping slugs and snails.
The result was two snails and one slug. Unbelievable they’ve made it across copper impregnated matting with additional slug pellets making their way up an upturned florists bucket coated with grease and surrounded with copper tape to be stopped in their tracks with additional slug pellets protecting the seedlings. These three won’t be troubling my plants again!!
Thursday 05 July 2012
Odd Broad Beans
Thursday was a day of contrasts, heavy thundery rain showers interspersed with some warm sunny periods producing the warmest day of the month, not that there was much to beat.
We harvested our first broad beans of the season this week from our early sowing of Witkiem Manita.
These beans had been sown in the greenhouse on the 23rd February and were planted out on the plot on 23rd April. They certainly didn’t enjoy the most favourable conditions after planting out. They weren’t the first crop this year that I thought about pulling up and starting again as the plants looked pale and straggly. As they produced just a few flowers and I reasoned a few early beans would be welcome, they survived. Now all those early flowers have turned into the beans we’ve just harvested. In normal years that would be an end to the plants but not this year.
The plants have gone on to produce more beans and have some flowers still to set pods. That’s not what I’d expect as they normally flower, produce beans and certainly won’t go on and produce more flowers and beans.
Just for good measure they’ve managed to produce beans in various stages of maturity which will be ready for harvesting over the next few weeks. In the end we may have a decent crop of beans from plants that I almost pulled up in early May. It’s certainly an unusual growing season!
Friday 06 July 2012
Rainfall Records Keep Coming!
What is it about Fridays and record amounts of rainfall. A couple of weeks ago Friday 22nd June set a new daily rain record of 35.1mm. Now two weeks later Friday 6th July replaces that record with 39.2mm (1.54”) which fell in the 12 hours between seven o’clock in the morning and seven o’clock in the evening. That’s equivalent to our average total July rainfall in 12 hours. Needless to say it’s resulted in lots of local flooding.
Worryingly next Friday will be Friday 13th so there’s no telling what might be in store for then.
The weather has certainly produced lots of rainfall over the last 3 months. Back at the end of March we had only received 60% of the rainfall expected for the previous 12 months. There were many dire warnings about what would happen if we had another dry summer and winter and how many years it would take to recover. A drought was declared and since then the rain’s arrived in abundance.
We’re now back up to having 100% of the amount we can expect over a 12 month period thanks to record levels of rainfall in June and July. So far this year I’ve recorded 439mm (17.3”) already slightly more than for the whole of 2011 when the rainfall amounted to 431mm and we’re only half way through the year.
It would now be nice if summer would start and we had some warm, sunny and dry days. Unfortunately the forecasters don’t seem to be suggesting that might happen anytime soon.
At least the forecast is for a dry day on Saturday.
Saturday 07 July 2012
A Crop First
It didn’t rain much on Saturday but it did wait until we visited the plot to see how much havoc yesterday’s downpour had wreaked on the plot. All the soft fruit has suffered from rain damage and the damp condition but. as always seems to happen. some things are enjoying the cooler wet condition.
Last year we tried to grow Carouby De Maussane peas with absolutely no success. We didn’t manage a single pod but put the failure down to very dry conditions meaning the peas must have gone short of water. We’ve had more success this year. This year the peas have grown well and we managed our first pulling. There’s still plenty of flowers so I’m hoping that they will have a longish harvesting period.
Our potatoes have also done well which I’m putting down to all the rain. I dug up this root of Vales Emerald - the main problem was finding the potatoes in the wet claggy soil which didn’t want to let the potatoes go. It was a wet and messy harvesting process and I suspect I’ve left a few potatoes in the soggy ground.
After a good wash in a bucket of water they looked a little bit more like new potatoes.