Sep wk 2

Thursday, 08 September & Friday, 09 September 2016

A Day at the Wildlife Park

The weather has continued to be warmer than we might expect for early September with temperatures into the low to mid twenties Celsius (70°F to 75°F). It will be a bit of shock when we return to more normal temperatures for the time of year.

I recently bought a new zoom lens for my Panasonic GH4 camera. It's a 100mm-300mm zoom lens in micro four thirds lens descriptions meaning it's equivalent to a 200-600mm lens in DSLR photography. To be honest the first couple of times I used it I was a little bit disappointed with the results.

I'm now getting a little bit more used to using it. A visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park gave me plenty of opportunities for a bit more practice. These cute meerkats are excellent subjects for a few test shots, well lots of test shots.

After exploring a few other areas of the park we came to one of the tiger enclosures. A couple of tigers were having a nap and didn't seem to be taking much notice of any onlookers or photographers. Why would they!

I thought I might check out a paw taken on maximum zoom.

A video test came as we arrived at the polar bear enclosure where three of the polar bears Nissan, Pixel and Nobby decided to take to the water and do a little bit of play fighting to entertain those watching.

We were lucky to catch them playing as we walked passed their enclosure before lunchtime. As we passed by later in the afternoon they were taking a well deserved afternoon nap.

Saturday, 10 September 2016

Weed Control Fabric Rotation

The weather was a little cloudier and cooler on Saturday but basically rain free. The forecast into the middle of next week is for fine warm conditions to return.

After our visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park on Thursday, Friday was back to allotmenting to get our autumn onions planted. Last week I'd dug over this year's broad bean patch.

Broad Bean Bed with Weed Control Fabric Removed

As you can see covering the bed with weed control fabric meant that once the remnants of the broad beans had been dispatched to the compost heap the bed was ready to be dug over.

Once dug over the fabric was replaced over the bed. The next stage of cultivation to get this bed ready for planting autumn onion sets would be to give the tiller a run through to break down the soil making it suitable for planting.

On Friday the bed was tilled and some fish, blood and bone fertiliser was incorporated at the same time. Then it was just a case of rotating the existing pieces of fabric to get them into their new positions. In the photo above the bed in the foreground grew this year's summer onions. That means that the fabric is cut into long slits to allow us to plant onions. This piece of fabric was moved to the bed in the centre of the photo ready for our autumn onions to be planted.

Any mulch that was left behind which was used to hold down the fabric was dug into the bed. While Sue planted up our autumn onions the summer onion bed was dug over.

Rather than leave this bed open to the weather all winter the weed control fabric that had been used for the broad beans was used to cover the bed until next spring. This may not be in line with the crop rotation for the beds on this part of the plot but this will be sorted out next spring when preparing for next summers crops.

Oddly we haven't finished harvesting the autumn onions we planted at this time last year. Usually by this time of the year last year's autumn planted onions have deteriorated so badly that they are only fit for the compost heap.

I think it is true to say that this little bed planted up last September would have been overrun with weeds by now if we hadn't used any weed control fabric. Another couple of weeks or so and we will probably have used up these few remaining September 2015 sown onions. They still taste good by the way.

Sunday, 11 September 2016

On For A September Record?

Sunday was a lovely day with almost dawn till dusk sunshine. It wasn't as warm as it has been but it was still rather impressive for almost mid September. Last year we had a very cool September but this year looks as though it could be a record breaking warm one.

Last year average temperature, shown by the dark blue line, never wavered from the bottom of the graph and was the coolest September I've recorded.

Certainly from the records, that I can find from the Met Office, suggest that it might be the warmest in last 100 years. Of course we aren't quite half way through the month yet so I might be a little premature in suggesting the possibility.

Monday, 12 & Tuesday, 13 September 2016

Hot & Wet Records

Well Tuesday went in for record breaking in a big way. Through the morning the cloud gradually cleared and as the sun broke through the temperature soared. By late afternoon it reached 29.4°C (84.9°F) the highest September temperature I've recorded taking over from 29 September 2011 when the temperature reached 28.4°C or 83.1°F.

Temperature, Sunshine and Rainfall Rate Records for Tuesday, 13 September 2016

That temperature record wasn't the only one of the day as in the early evening we had a thunderstorm and heavy rain. We only had 6.6mm (0.26in) but it fell in a very short space of time and at a highest intensity of 83.4mm/hr (3.28in/hr) the highest of 2016 so far.

In the afternoon we had a trip down to the allotment. I had planned on digging up the last of our potatoes but thought it was a bit too hot for that particular task. I settled for picking some of our apples instead.

I had a look around the plot and our recently planted autumn onion sets and brassicas looked a little bit on the dry side so I decided to give them a drop of water. If only I'd known what was to fall naturally from the sky in a few hours time I needn't have bothered.

Wednesday, 14 September 2016

Blight Resistant - I'm Not Convinced

Wednesday was another lovely mild day for mid September with some sunny spells for good measure. Tuesday night's storms had cleared away leaving us with a dry day.

This year we've grown a blight resistant tomato called Crimson Crush. We grew this variety for the first time last year and thought that the tomatoes tasted good enough to give the variety another go. As nothing on the allotment suffered from blight last year it wasn't much of a test of its blight resistant qualities.

That's not been the case this year. This is how our Sungold tomatoes growing on the plot look. Devastated by blight the crop went from looking lovely and green to this brown looking mess in a few days. Growing alongside these Sungold are three Crimson Crush tomatoes.

At first sight these don't look too bad. They still have some green leaves and the tomatoes appear to be surviving but a closer look reveals they haven't all survived the blight.

These tomatoes on Crimson Crush aren't going to be any use in the kitchen and will be consigned to the compost heap. However, some trusses of tomatoes are still looking OK to harvest and have managed to delay the blight.

This little truss of tomatoes looks to have survived but we're probably going to have more chance of ripening the fruit off the plant.

I'm not sure I'd bother growing Crimson Crush again. It obviously does have some blight resistance but blight will win and take over the plant eventually. Our outdoor plants are the odds and sods that didn't get planted out into the greenhouse and would have been consigned to the compost heap in any case so if we do loose them to blight it's just bad luck.

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.