Saturday, 09 July 2016

Blimey Only Went to Water Our Tomatoes!

Saturday morning started off not too bad but then it rained from mid morning to just after lunchtime.

​

We hadn't been down to the plot since last Tuesday due to one reason or another and I was a little concerned that our greenhouse tomatoes might be in desperate need of a drink. So once the rain stopped a quick trip to the plot was planned mainly to check on the tomato plants. It was still very dull with a few spits and spots of rain but felt mild.

​

Sue said she'd have a look to see if we had any strawberries ready, while I watered the tomatoes. It sort of mushroomed from there. The tomatoes weren't too desperate as it turned out, almost four days without watering sort of sums up our weather at the moment. It didn't take long to give the tomatoes a drink and on my way to fill up the watering can I noticed that there looked to be a good crop of strawberries (Cupid) ready to pick. These are in a different part of the plot to where Sue was picking strawberries.

 

Once I'd done the watering I started picking strawberries, then decided to dig a root of early potatoes (Orla), and then a couple of heads of calabrese Marathon. Sue finished picking strawberries and asked me if I'd checked to see if any raspberries were ready. The answer was no I hadn't checked  but when I did there was enough for a small punnet of  Tulameen and these were added to the harvest. A few early ripening blueberries were picked and we were ready for home.

 

Not a bad afternoon considering I only planned on watering the tomatoes in the greenhouse.

 

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, 10-12 July 2016

Waterlogged Raspberries?

The last three days haven't been too bad but they have been fairly breezy days for July. We're still waiting for summer to start and the forecasters aren't daring to suggest when that might happen.

 

Last month Sue posted about how our raspberries, Glen Ample mysteriously died off after growing away and flowering in early spring. You can read her post here. We sort of dismissed that the roots were waterlogged thinking that this would be the drier end of the row. We might have to think again about that waterlogging issue.

​

I've added a little graph showing our rainfall for the last four weeks. There's not been many dry days but on the other hand we've not had any enormous amounts of rainfall. It's just been rather miserable showery weather all the time. Anyhow, I decided that it was time to dig over the rest of the bed that the raspberries are in. It's been left since last summer when some old strawberry plants were removed and I never got round to digging it over winter. Left for 12 months I expect the ground to have gone very hard, that's the way things are on our plot. I've now got half of the bed dug over and it has certainly been hard work.

​

Conventional wisdom would suggest that all the weeds are removed as the bed is dug. That's just not a possible option when the ground is as solid as this bed is. Not only is the soil very hard but also very wet. Normally after turning the soil over hitting any lumps with the back of a spade or fork will break the soil open and any weeds along with their roots can be removed. If any of these lumps are hit with the back of a spade they merely change shape rather than break up.

​

As you can see from the above photo the dug over soil isn't a pretty sight and I've still got another half of the bed to dig over.

 

Other areas of the plot certainly aren't waterlogged and where I'm digging our Casablanca potatoes I'd describe the soil as dry rather than wet. So perhaps this patch of ground where our raspberries are planted is susceptible to waterlogging resulting in our raspberries problems and some additional drainage requirements are needed.

 

Wednesday, Thursday, 13-14 July 2016

Some Blueberry Protection

Still waiting for summer to start in Ossett. Wednesday and Thursday weren't too bad although we did have a heavy shower over Wednesday lunchtime but we still managed a trip to the allotment. Thursday was our sunniest day of the month to date but as you can see from the trace below it wasn't wall to wall sunshine.

 

 

 

On the plot we have a row of four blueberry bushes. The only way we've managed any sort of crop from these bushes over the years is by picking the berries as soon as they shows any signs of changing colour from green to blue and allowing them to ripen off the bushes. The blackbirds seem to adore blueberries and aren't satisfied with helping themselves to raspberries and tayberries. All our jostaberries have magically disappeared from the plot this year too.  They've devoured all our cherries grown at home as well, in fact lots of our fruit this year has been for the benefit of the birds rather than us!

 

​

In an attempt to hopefully save a few blueberries from the blackbirds I've erected a make shift fruit cage around the bushes to try to keep off the blackbirds. We'll have to see if it works.

 

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