May wk 4

Saturday & Sunday 21/22 May 2016

One Wet Day, One Dry Day

Saturday turned out to be rather wet. We decided on planting out our sweet pea plants on the allotment. Of course as soon as we had all the plants unloaded and in position ready for planting it decided to pour down with rain. We took shelter in our shed and had a cup of coffee while the shower passed over.

As the rain stopped we left the shed and began planting the sweet peas but no sooner had we started than it started raining again. We decided we may as well get soaked and carried on planting.

At least we got the sweet peas planted. We decided that they probably didn't need watering in.

On Sunday we visited the Great Central Railway who were holding their Railways at Work event. We thought we'd watch someone else doing a bit of work. Luckily the weather turned out to be warm and dry.

Monday 23 May 2016

Got Wet Again!

We certainly aren’t picking our days for visits to the plot very well. After getting a soaking on Saturday we decided to spend Monday afternoon at the allotment. The fastest growing thing on the plot at the minute is grass and our paths were in need of a serious strimming. Sue had some annual flowers to plant out whilst I was cutting the grass.

Temperature, Rainfall & Sunshine Records from Saturday 21 May - Monday 23 May 2016

As you can see the rain held off until around the middle of the afternoon. We almost packed up to head home but after a while the rain stopped and the sun came out and it felt very warm. We changed our minds and carried on doing a few tidying up jobs as well as planting and strimming.

This part of the plot is now fully planted up and it's just a matter of looking after the crops and hopefully harvesting some fresh fruit and vegetables. There is, however one bed on this part of the plot that we want to renovate but we never seem to get round to it. At the moment is doing its best to look good with the first roses coming into bloom, some iris flowers as well as lots of poached egg plants flowering amongst the grass.

Its one of those jobs that we never quite get round to on the plot. Sorting out our vegetable crops is always our priority and once we get on top of all the planting we'll consider doing a bit of renovation. At the moment I'm not sure whether we are behind or just about right with our sowing and planting. We're definitely not in front.

On this side of the plot we have much more planting to do but some beds still need a little bit of clearing and digging before we can get our courgettes, sweetcorn, leeks and more peas sown let alone more annual flowers. If the weather stays favourable over the next week and these beds can be dug over we'll be on schedule but some bad weather now could put us behind.

If it turns out I need something to do I could always tackle this little bit of jungle under our greengage trees. It would look much better with a good strimming but I'm not too sure what might be among the long grass and in the nettles. I'll content myself with the fact that nettles are supposed to be good for wildlife. Maybe I'll get round to it later in the year.

Tuesday 24 May 2016

Must Do Better!!

I'm not sure if the figures back me up but May seems to be ending colder than it started. On Monday night, or rather the early hours of Tuesday morning, the temperature got down to 4.6°C or 40.3°F.

I always reckon the allotment site is a little bit colder than home. It must be located in a cold spot so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there wasn't a frost on the plot on Tuesday morning. That 4.6°C is the equal lowest I've recorded so late in May with the only other occasion occurring the 25 May 2013.

I was a bit surprised to receive a letter from Wakefield Metropolitan Council on Tuesday warning me that I wasn't keeping my plot up to their exacting standards of cultivation.

I'll be interested to see exactly happens after 14 days.

Meanwhile Tuesday was spent pottering about in the garden wilfully ignoring the letter. The pond filter had stopped working which turned out to be nothing more serious than masses of gunk blocking up the pump. All the time I was messing about around the pond I was treated to a family of young starlings squawking in the magnolia tree demanding food from their parents.

We've some sparrow chicks about and our blackbirds and blue tits are busy collecting beakfuls of food for their chicks.

Camera at the ready.

Wednesday 25 May 2016

Cold, Wet and Dull

Wednesday was probably the worst day of the month. May seems to be keeping the worst weather for the end of the month. It was cold and damp all day although we didn't have as much rain as some of the forecasts had suggested. The rain mostly held off until late in the afternoon but it was cloudy and cool all morning.

Temperature, Sunshine & Rainfall Details for Monday 23 May to Wednesday 25 May 2016

By teatime the mercury had only managed to make it to 10.2°C the coolest maximum daytime temperature of the month. It was also the dullest day of the month. I've left the sunshine trace (yellow line) on the chart above so the trace for sunny days on Monday and Tuesday can be compared with Wednesday's dullness. Once it starts to get light a sunshine trace is recorded and the difficult bit is converting the original trace into hours of sunshine. My weather station calculated 4.8 hours of sunshine on Monday, 6.7 hours Tuesday and zero hours on Wednesday.

It wasn't a day for venturing out into the garden to take photos nor was it a day for visiting the plot. I did take some photos of our hostas around the pond edge on Tuesday to record the fact that so far they have remained slug free.

I think it's unlikely that we'll be able to keep them like this all summer but we can always hope.

Thursday 26 May 2016

More Wet Weather - Gardening on Hold

We certainly are having a poor end to May. Thursday turned out to be another cool and cloudy day with lots of showers throughout the day.

We've got stuff to be doing on the allotment but having got soaked through on our last two visits we're a little bit reluctant to get soaked for a third time.

I did manage a few minutes in the greenhouse transplanting a few lettuce and sweet pepper seedlings but we need some growing space at home.

We need to get some plants moved to allotment to create some wriggle room in the greenhouse and cold frames. The forecast for the next few days isn't all that good either.

Climbing French and Runner Beans with Broad Bean Robin Hood

When the weather does improve I think we're going to be busy on the plot.

Friday 27 May 2016

The Summerhouse Collection

Friday's weather was a great improvement over the last few days. It took until the afternoon for the clouds to break and the sun to come through but it was a welcome change from the drabness of the last couple of days.

We visited a few garden centres and of course we didn't come away empty handed. We bought some alpines and two scented geraniums for the summerhouse.

As it was a nice late afternoon and early evening we made the best of it and planted up our newly acquired plants.

I took the opportunity to repot last year's summerhouse plants into fresh compost so they should be set up for the summer.

We bought this begonia. Once upon a time this almost grew like a weed in the garden and greenhouse but for some reason we lost all the plants. Perhaps a bad winter finished them off. It's like having an old friend back.

Our full list of purchases is included below

Saturday & Sunday 28/29 May 2016

Staking

We made the most of a decent weekend weatherwise clearing beds and planting on the allotment. Saturday was the better of the two days with more sunshine although the temperature for both days was around the 18°C (65°F) mark which is about average for late May.

We needed to plant out our runner bean and climbing French bean plants before they outgrew their containers. The longest job though is erecting some supports for the beans to grow up. The weed control fabric is in its third year of use for runner beans and this was already in place with the slits cut in it ready for the beans to be planted through.

Runner Beans St George Celebration & Lady Di. Climbing French Beans Cosse Violette, Cobra & Corona d'Oro

It's important to make the frames secure otherwise high winds in summer will blow the beans over resulting in a loss of the crop. We use bamboo canes as supports as we haven't managed to work out a better natural source as supports.

Our peas, Onward, and sweet peas crops were also in need of support. We use hazel twigs for this and I've been amazed how well they seem to work. I used to use some sort of stakes and netting either a metal mesh or plastic mesh specifically for supporting peas. Neither worked as well or looked as good as the hazel twigs.

Sweet Peas

Peas Onward

Our main problem at the moment is that weevils are munching away at the peas and we're just having to hope that the peas will grow through the attack. We are hoping that we manage to keep the slug damage on the beans to a minimum as last year the newly planted beans were devastated by slugs and although the beans survived our crop was much later than normal.

Monday & Tuesday 30/31 May 2016

Great Start - Disappointing End

It's not been a very good end to the month. In fact it's been disappointing after such a good start to May. The first week was brilliant and although we had plenty of sunshine in week two the temperatures fell away. Since then it has been unsettled although we have managed a few nice days.

Temperature, Rainfall and Sunshine Records for May 2016

The temperature for the month will be about average for Ossett. The average daily highs have been on the high side but to balance this the average daily lows have been on the low side. Probably not what the gardener needs.

Over the past year we've had our fair share of windy months, but May 2016 has turned out to be the calmest May I've recorded with no gusts of note all month.

I have been trying to catch up on some digging down on the allotment. That rain in the middle of the month made it a bit wet for digging so it was left until Bank Holiday Monday for me to do a bit of catching up. Still after a busy Monday afternoon we have a few more beds ready for planting up.

Some beds on the plot were still a little too wet to dig whilst others were in just the right state. I have wondered how covering the ground with weed control fabric affects the state of the soil. Just when I'm starting to think that covering the ground might be the reason why some parts are wetter than others I find a bed covered with fabric digs much better than one that's been left uncovered. This leads me to think that whatever it is that results in some beds being wetter than others it's not down to weed control fabric.

As meteorological summer time starts we're looking forward to some better weather although judging from the forecast for the next few days I think it might be a little bit of wishful thinking.

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.