Jul wk 3

Friday, 15 July 2016

Strawberries Galore

Another non event day as far as summer weather goes as Friday was dull with some light rain after lunch and into the early afternoon.

It was a little bit strange in that after the rain passed through and although it remained dull the temperature lifted noticeably.

If you follow our blog posts you will have noticed that we've been harvesting lots of strawberries over the past few weeks.

Last spring we planted up our new strawberry beds with eight varieties of strawberries and this year they are providing their first real crop. I thought I'd total up the quantities of fruit that each variety has produced.

We've certainly had a much better harvest than we expected. With all the damp weather over the harvesting period we thought the slugs and snail would do far more damage than they have and fortunately despite the dampness we haven't lost very many berries due to mouldiness. As you can see from the table the star performers regarding quantity have been Cupid and Fenella. The poorest performer has been Vibrant. Malwina is a late variety and we think the best tasting strawberry out of all our varieties. It still has plenty of berries to come compared with all the other varieties which are now coming to the end of their cropping period.

I'll update the table again when the strawberry harvest is complete.

Saturday, 16 July 2016

This Looks A Bit Hot!

Saturday morning was dull but it brightened up in the afternoon before clouding over again later in the afternoon. Still it didn't rain and we got a chance to do some harvesting and stuff down on the plot. Now and again I post the occasional weather forecast I get on my Desktop from the Met Office. Usually I post these when we have some naff weather forecast for the next few days.

I thought I'd post this one from Sunday morning showing summer arriving and going over the space of a few days. It's not often we have a forecast temperature of 30°C. For most of July we've struggled to reach 20°C so Tuesday might come as a bit of a shock to the system.

I posted yesterday about our strawberry harvest this year. On Saturday afternoon Sue picked this punnet of Malwina strawberries which have turned out to be our favourite variety.

The fruits really are a deep red compared to our other strawberries. They were absolutely delicious and we finished the lot in one go.

Sunday, 17 July 2016 - Tuesday, 19 July 2016

What a Couple of Scorchers!

The weather forecast turned out to be very accurate and as predicted Monday and Tuesday turned out to be the hottest days of the year. First Monday took the record with 29.1°C only for that to be surpassed by Tuesday's 31.3°C.

Temperature and Sunshine Records for Sunday, 17 July - Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Only on six occasions in the last seven years has the temperature made it to 30°C or more in Ossett with this Tuesday becoming the third highest temperature and Monday the thirteenth highest temperature I've recorded over the last seven years. The top twenty hottest days are listed below.

We'd decided on a couple of days away from home to visit Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire and RHS Hyde Hall in Essex. It was a little too hot for even simply strolling around the gardens.

The Dry Garden at RHS Hyde Hall

The Walled Garden at Wimpole Estate

We're left wondering if our tomato plants in the plot greenhouse will have managed to survive the high temperature. I did give them a good soaking before we left.

Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Another Hot One

Wednesday turned out to be another hot day with the temperature reaching 27.7°C (81.9°F) during the afternoon. The much heralded thunderstorms never materialised in Ossett.

Wednesday did create another weather record for my Ossett weather station as the overnight low only fell to 18.3°C or 64.9°F. The previous highest overnight low temperature of 17.9°C (64.2°F) occurred on 21 August 2015.

After watering our home greenhouse tomatoes and pots of fruit and flowers in the morning it was a case of visiting the plot to check on the greenhouse tomatoes there. Luckily they seemed to have survived the hot sunny days without any ill effects.

If you are a regular follower of my blog you might remember that we are testing out some new to us varieties of potatoes bought at our local garden centre - The Horticentre - when they held a potato day back at the beginning of the year. We've already tested the first early potato Orla which tasted very good. In a sort of blind taste test Sue didn't spot that I'd swapped Casablanca for Orla as both tasted very good.

I noticed today that the tops of a second early variety Vivaldi have turned yellow suggesting that the potatoes underneath aren't going to do much more growing. On our next visit to the plot I might lift a root and taste test the potatoes.

This is my plan of how the potatoes were planted. The photo shows one remaining root of Orla to lift with Vivaldi to the left of the photo. All the remaining potatoes are maincrop varieties and will be left in the ground until the tops die down.

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.