Saturday, 08 April 2017

A Cold & Calm Start To The Day

The forecast is for Saturday to be our mildest day of the year with Sunday promising to be slightly milder. However, it's certainly been a cold start to Saturday with the temperature falling to 0.6°C (33.1°F) at 06:35. It's also been a very calm night too with no wind recorded at all.

 

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Wind Speed Records 07-08 April 2017

 

As you can see from the above weather station readings it was calm between 21:00 Friday until 09:00 on Saturday morning. That's unusual for us to have such a completely calm spell.

 

On Friday we visited Norwich and had lunch in the jungle.

 

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It's certainly different. This lemon and ginger cake finished off our jungle lunch a treat.

 

Sunday, 09 April 2017

We're Being Spoilt

Saturday was a glorious sunny April day with the temperature reaching 22.6°C (72.7°F) making it the warmest day of the year so far. Sunday has started off lovely and sunny so Saturday might not hold onto that record for very long.

 

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Temperature & Sunshine Records 08 April 2017

 

We decided to make the most of the lovely weather and get some planting out done at the allotment.

 

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Pear - Invincible

 

Our pear trees are now in full flower and putting on a superb display. I wonder how many of the flowers will set fruit. There were plenty of pollinating insects doing their bit on Saturday.

 

Sue set to planting out our broad beans - Witkiem Manita - and shallots which had been raised in modules in the greenhouse and had spent the last week in the coldframe hardening off.

 

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Broad Bean - Witkiem Manita - sown on 02 March 2017

 

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The other half of this bed will be filled with more broad beans sown at a later date to provide some continuity of harvesting. Our second variety is Robin Hood and is a shorter growing variety. I'll probably sow the seeds in a couple of weeks time.

 

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Shallots - Golden Gourmet & Red Sun - planted in modules on 02 March 2017

 

The shallots don't take up very much space in this bed so rest of the bed will be filled up with onions.

 

While Sue was planting out our shallots and broad beans I was cultivating some of the beds that had their covering of weed control fabric removed last week.

 

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Most of our soil is in excellent condition for cultivating at the moment. This bed was once our old strawberry bed. Last year it grew a decent crop of potatoes and this year we are going to grow our sweet peas and winter squashes in it. We think we might be able to squeeze in a row of peas too.

 

Pity that the fine weather isn't forecast to last.

 

Monday, 10 April 2017

Busy Day Planting

Sunday turned out to be our warmest day of the year as forecast but it was a close run thing. No sooner had the temperature peaked at 22.7°C (72.9°F) a whole 0.1°C (0.15°F) higher than Saturday when the weather took a turn for the worse. Suddenly a cool almost gale force wind blew up and the sunshine disappeared. It was back on with a jumper.

 

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Temperature, Sunshine & Wind Speed Records for 09 April 2017

 

It didn't stop us getting done what we wanted to do on the plot. Our modular grown onions were planted out alongside the shallots. Our first two rows of Onward peas were sown and we managed to get four rows of main crop potatoes planted as well. Part of the plot was strimmed and Sue did a bit more refurbishment to our autumn raspberry bed.

 

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On this part of the plot we've only one more bed to plant up although it doesn't look all planted up at the moment. The bed in the right foreground is planted up with early potatoes then working round the beds in a clockwise direction are onions and shallots, then peas under the sticks, which leaves one bed to be planted up with our early brassicas.

 

Wednesday, 12 April 2017

Fruit Setting?

Well we couldn't expect the fantastic weekend weather to last and it hasn't. It's turned much cooler and cloudier over the last couple of days and it's been windy at times.

 

Tuesday was a day to be working in the greenhouse rather than outside. Each day there's an inspection of our apricot, peach and nectarine trees in the greenhouse to see if any of those flowers of a few weeks ago have set any fruit. At the moment things look promising but it's early days.

 

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Apricot - Flavourcot

 

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Peach - Avalon Pride

 

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Nectarine - Fantasia

 

It looks as though all three trees have set some fruit so we are hopeful that we'll at least get something from each tree.

 

The early salad leaves and club root resistant brassicas sown at the beginning of the month have germinated well and they'll need pricking out into modules in a few days time.

 

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Top left Red Cabbage "Lodero"  then moving round clockwise Spinach "Amazon", Rocket, and Cabbage "Kalibro"

 

Of course now there's some new spring greenery in the greenhouse the pests are starting to move in.

 

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Mint sauce with added protein anybody.

 

Thursday, 13 April 2017

A Dry Start for April

It's been windy and felt on the cool side since the almost summery weather of the weekend but in truth the temperatures have only returned to their average values for mid April. However, this is the driest start to April I've recorded with only 0.6mm (0.02in) having fallen so far this month. This might be a statement I regret making by the end of the month.

 

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Temperature & Rainfall Records for April 2017

 

As you may be aware, if you're a regular follower, our plots at the allotment suffer from club root. If possible it means that we only grow club root resistant brassicas on the plot as there is no cure for this disease of the root system.

 

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As you can see from the photo above the plant develops roots which are swollen resulting in stunted plant growth and in severe cases the brassica will die off completely. To make matters more difficult on the plot not all our beds suffer from this problem so I try to keep a note of which beds are affected.

 

In order to try to overcome this problem or a least to reduce its effects we are growing our early brassicas in 5" (125mm) pots.

 

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Cabbage "Regency", Cauliflower "Helsinki" & Calabrese "Aquiles"

 

None of these early varieties are club root resistant. They will be planted out in a bed which is in a four year rotation plan and has never shown any signs of club root but hopefully growing bigger plants in larger pots will give us a better chance of a good early crop. It's also worth mentioning that so far we have never suffered with a club root problem with any of the varieties we've grown that have been sold as "club root resistant" varieties.

 

Friday, 14 April 2017

Our New RSPB Reserve Is Open

Although the weather wasn’t anything very special for the middle of April we decided on a visit to our newly opened RSPB Reserve at St Aidan’s. The reserve isn’t very far from where we live so it was just an afternoon visit. The reserve is part of St Aidan's Country Park which is owned by Leeds City Council but looked after by the RSPB. Difficulties over land ownership have delayed the opening of the site. St Aidan's Country Park is the site of the former St Aidan's opencast coal site which is within the flood plains of the river Aire.

 

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It's like many of the nature reserves around us that have come about as the result of previous coal mining operations. Unlike all the other reserves though a massive piece of the past remains preserved at St Aidan’s.

 

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The excavation of the coal was done by an enormous walking Dragline Excavator. When the works were completed this massive machine remained on site and has been preserved by the Friends of St. Aidan's BE1150 Dragline.

 

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These draglines aren’t powered by conventional diesel engines as you would expect but are sort of connected directly into the National Electricity Grid so huge is their energy demand when working.

 

In March 1988, the St Aidan’s opencast site suffered from a failure of the banks and flood-protection of the river Aire causing massive flooding of the site. A lake of about 100 ha (250 acres) and up to 70 m (230ft) in depth was created, and coal extraction was halted for 10 years. Remedial works cost around £20 million and included rerouting the River Aire and the Aire & Calder canal. It’s thought old mine workings beneath the opencast site may have contributed to the failure of the river banks. Water was eventually pumped out of the lake and open cast coal mining completed.

 

The site is large and open and a cold wind was whistling across most of the site making it feel colder than it was. We still managed to see a few birds though even if they were a bit camera shy.

 

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Great Crested Grebe

 

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Reed Bunting

 

No doubt we'll be making a few return visits hopefully when it's a bit warmer.

 

 

 

Disclaimer

This weather site is operated as an amateur weather station site and should not be used as official data. I make every effort to ensure my data is as accurate as possible but I cannot guarantee that the data meets the requirements of the Meteorological Office or other professional weather monitoring organisations.

©M Garrett 2016