Saturday, 17 August 2019
More Gale Force Winds and Rain
After a pleasant warm start to August, the weather over the last week has deteriorated rapidly. The warmer weather has disappeared to be replaced by much cooler, wet and windy weather. Last Saturday wind speeds reached 27mph, only the second time in 10 years that I'd recorded such speeds in August.
Temperature & Wind Speeds Records 10-16 August 2019
On Thursday afternoon those gust speeds were reached again making it three times in ten years and two of those occasions in the last week. I haven't put the rainfall on the chart above, but following on from a windy Thursday was a wet Friday. It was mainly light rain for most of the day with heavier spells on and off throughout amounting to 8.4mm in all. This brings this month's total up to 31.6mm about average for the midpoint of the month. I have the impression that's it's been much wetter than that.
So far the weather hasn't done any serious damage or delayed any jobs on the allotment. By far the worst casualty of the gales is one of our cardoons.
Its growing days for this year are well and truly over. I'll leave the blown over stems as they are until the flowers have faded as they're adored by the bees. I'll then remove all the stems and leave the cardoon to regrow from the base.
Although we've lifted a reasonable amount of potatoes, I think I need to lift most of those remaining to avoid them becoming slug fodder. Now that the ground is wet, I think the longer they are left in the ground the greater the amount of pest damage there will be. I lifted some Osprey and Nadine this week.
Potato - Osprey
Both varieties produced a decent crop with only a small amount of pest damage. We picked our first apples, which we think are Discovery, but as we inherited the apple trees years ago we can't be certain of the variety.
So far the wasps have stayed away from the apples presumably because they are enjoying the plums too much. Most of our Oullins gage plums were attacked by wasps as soon as they were ripe ruining most of the crop. I'm assuming they will move to the greengages as soon as they start to ripen and in a bid to save a few gages for us I've started picking some unripe fruits.
Greengage - Mannings
Hopefully, we can ripen these fruits at home away from the any wasps. I'll have to decide quickly whether or not to pick more greengages before the wasps move in.
Tuesday, 20 August 2019
Lost In The Gales - One Apple Tree
It was very windy when we were at the allotment on Thursday afternoon and on Friday it rained for most of the day meaning gardening was on hold. It wasn't until Saturday morning when I headed up the garden to see if anything needed watering in our cold frames that I discovered the damage caused by the gale.
I found that I couldn't get to our coldframes as they were covered by one of our apple trees. The gales on Thursday had obviously been too much for it, in full leaf and ladened with apples, the trunk had snapped off somewhere around the graft. We think the apples were a variety called Peasgood Nonsuch which we bought many years ago.
The tree has now been cut up and the apples, which weighed in at 20kg, boxed up. We will have to see how long they will keep.
Some of the apples are damaged and will need using quickly. It's a shame about the tree as the apples it produced were very good for cooking. We'll have to make best use of the last ever apples the tree will produce.