Wednesday, 08 March 2017
First Fruit Blossom Out
After a little bit more overnight rain it brightened up towards lunchtime with some lengthy sunny spells. There was a strong breeze which took the edge off the temperature.
In the greenhouse our first fruit blossom of the year is out. Our peach, nectarine and apricot have all come into flower at the same time.
Nectarine - Fantasia
Apricot Flavourcot
Peach - Avalon Pride
Of course no self respecting pollinating insect is going to be flying around the greenhouse so early in the year so Sue will be very busy with her pollinating brush.
Thursday, 09 March 2017
Worse Than I Thought
Thursday was another lovely sunny day. However, it was spoilt in the morning by a gale force wind which abated through the early afternoon.
Remember back in early January I blogged that we had one of those storms with "no name" but it did more damage in the garden than any of the "named" storms. It left one of our fence panels looking a bit worse for wear.
Damage from storm on 11 January 2017
I didn't think at the time it would be too much of a job to do a repair. My intention was to remove the panel and replace the broken willow filling before reinstalling the panel. That idea didn't last very long once I began trying to remove the panel. Most of the screws holding it to the posts came out without too much trouble but there's always one or in this case two, one in each post where the head of the screw had burred and there was no way of unscrewing it. After a bit of messing about it was obvious that most of the framing timbers in the panel had seen better days and were now rotten.
Fencing panel removed 09 March 2017
As you can see there wasn't much that resembled a fence panel by the time it was removed. There's now a gap in the border that needs filling.
I've recycled any half decent pieces of timber to use down the allotment. They will be used for labelling up our rows of vegetables.
Not much to show considering I originally thought that I'd be able to repair the damaged fence panel. My thoughts are now turning to how to replace the panel. The easiest option is to just buy a new panel but I'm not sure how easy it will be to get one into position without doing too much damage to the planting around it. My other idea is to build a new panel in situ which I think is my favoured option at the minute.
Saturday, 11 March 2017
Mildest Day of the Year
It wasn't that good a day as it remained cloudy all day although it did stay dry. It became our mildest day of the year by the smallest of margins as the temperature reached 14.3°C (57.7°F) taking over from 14.2°C (57.6°F)reached on 20 February.
Temperature Record for 10 March 2017
We headed over to Lancashire to the East Lancashire Railway Spring Steam Gala. It was miserable and murky as we headed over Saddleworth Moor but the weather did improve a little during the afternoon.
Our starting point was Burrs Country park where there always seems to be other photographic opportunities between the trains.
It's not a bad spot for photographing trains either.
Sunday, 12 March 2017
Wow Cauliflowers to Harvest!
It wasn't that brilliant a day on Saturday as it remained dull and cloudy all day. It was another reasonably mild day for the time of year.
We headed for the plot without any real plan of what we were going to do but there's always something that can be done even if it's only a bit of tidying up. When we arrived Sue asked me if I'd had a look to see how our cauliflower plants were doing.
This is the plan of our brassica bed planted up at the beginning of September last year. The plants haven't done particularly well over winter and the Amsterdam and Moby Dick cauliflowers didn't make it through the winter. Most of the other plants have just about survived but when I last looked a few visits ago I wasn't holding out much hope of anything to harvest.
Cauliflower - North Foreland
This is what Sue found when she had a look to see how they were doing. We'd four medium sized heads ready for picking. These were a nice surprise. Looking at the remaining plants we may be lucky enough to get some Aalsmeer cauliflowers and a few small cabbages.
Well as you can see from my video below the frogs are back in the pond and doing what frogs do at this time of year.
They are about a month earlier to arrive this year compared to last year but we thought their arrival was very late last year so maybe now is more their usual time. We are trying to come up with a way to stop all their frogspawn being eaten by the fish. We're toying with the idea of using a very close mesh planting basket with some frogspawn scooped into it. This will be left in the pond for frogspawn to turn firstly into tadpoles and then froglets. At this stage they should be safe from the fish. Watch this space.
Monday, 13 March 2017
More Potatoes in Tubs
Sunday turned out to be a lovely mild March day as the temperature reached 15.3°C or 59.5°F the highest of the year. After a bit of a dull start to the day there was a decent amount of sunshine in the afternoon making it feel so much better. We decided on an afternoon at the allotment to get a little more tidying up done and to plant a few more potatoes in tubs.
Temperature & Solar Radiation Records for 10-12 March 2017
We managed to pot another three tubs of Casablanca early potatoes. These will grow on in the plot greenhouse. They've joined the two tubs that we planted up a couple of weeks ago.
Potatoes - Casablanca
I reckon that the beds on our plot are still a bit too wet to dig over. I'm not too worried as I don't think I've anything that needs planting just yet especially as we have a few early potatoes planted up in those pots. A nice dry week would do the beds a great deal of good. Not being able to get any digging done I decided to do some tidying under our greengage trees.
I think that this will probably be the last of the major tidying up jobs to get done as attention switches to sowing and planting crops.
Sue did a bit more on our new bug hotel as well as some more weeding of our fruit tree beds
I've included a video of our gardening activities of the last few days.
By the time we left the plot on Sunday the sunshine had disappeared.
Tuesday, 14 March 2017
Getting Ready
Monday was another decent March day although it wasn't as mild as Sunday. So far March has been kind to us and it will be a bit of a disappointment and a shock to the system if we get a bit of a cold spell.
On the plot the grass had dried out so I decided it was time for the allotment paths to get their first strim of the year.
Some of the beds on the plot are now starting to dry out. I lifted the weed control fabric on two of our beds. I reckon if it stays dry these beds should be ready to cultivate by the end of the week.
These will be the first four beds to be planted up. The one in the fore ground will be early potatoes Casablanca and then progressing round in a clockwise direction will be onions, peas and early brassicas. The brassica bed was prepared a few weeks ago and is ready for planting. The early potatoes won't be planted through weed control fabric as this makes harvesting, as and when needed, more difficult.
Part plan for plot 42 in 2017 (notes from 2016 left as reminders)
The weed control fabric has been rolled up and moved to the end of the appropriate bed ready to be reused once the bed has been dug over.
Now all I need is for the weather to remain dry for the rest of the week and for my cultivator to start up after its long winter break.
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