Friday, 24 May 2019
Ants In The Banana
The weather over the last week has been much better, a little bit more May like, and it's meant we've made good progress at the allotment and in the garden. One of the jobs I've been meaning to do in the greenhouse was to repot our banana plant.
By the middle of summer it makes a fine plant for the greenhouse. We've tried it outside and whilst it survives okay it only takes one windy day and the leaves are shredded to pieces. In the spring the stems are cut back and new leaves soon start to form.
I always think it deserves repotting into fresh compost each spring as it grows so rampantly through summer. The plant was moved out of the greenhouse and onto the lawn to be repotted. There's a bit more space on the lawn to tip the banana plant out of the pot and to allow some of the old compost to be removed. However, as the banana plant was eased out of the pot I wasn't expecting to find hundreds if not thousands of ants.
What really surprised me was that I hadn't seen any ant activity in the greenhouse and I wasn't expecting to find anything untoward as the rootball emerged from the tub. The ants scurried in all directions into the compost trying to protect their pupae. After watching the ants for a few minutes I decided the best thing I could do was to clear as much soil off the root as possible and hopefully most of the ants. It proved a tricky job keeping the ants at bay while the soil was knocked off the root. In the end I decided to give the root a pressure wash to clear away the last of the soil and ants.
The root split into two as I was removing the soil and after pressure washing them I was left with the two roots shown above. These have been replanted into new containers to grow on.
I'm sure the main root will be okay but I'm not so sure about the root that broke away.
I'll have to keep a close look out for other ant infestations in the greenhouse. I'm already thinking that there might be a nest in the apricot tree pot. I think the tell-tale sign is the fine soil in the saucer under the pot.
Having had a quick look online I think the ants have been enjoying the honeydew produced by aphids on the peach and apricot trees but the numbers of aphids have been vastly reduced by spraying the trees so I'm wondering what else the ants may find to eat or if there is a simple way to eradicate them from the pot.
I also made a video of repotting the banana plant and the ants nest.
Wednesday, 29 May 2019
That Was A Cold One - Almost A Frost!
The early hours of Wednesday morning produced the coldest late May temperature I've recorded in the last 10 years.
Temperature Records 27-29 May 2019
It's soon warmed up and you'd never known that we'd had such a cold early morning with the temperature falling to 3.9°C or 39.0°F. It's easily the coldest night this late into spring I've recorded as you can see from the table below. The temperatures are colour coordinated from red to blue with dark red indicating warmest through to dark blue representing the coldest nights.
May Low Temperature 2010-2019
At home at least the cold night doesn't appear to have done any damage. Our climbing French beans Cobra were left outside to germinate and the newly emerging leaves look unscathed this morning.
I'm hoping there are no colder nights to come. I don't expect to be providing frost protection as we move into June.
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Proper Day's Rain Wanted
It seems quite a while ago now since we had what I would call a proper wet day. The forecast for the last week or so has been correct in predicting showers. The trouble is by their nature they're hit and miss and I think in general we've been pretty good at doing the missing.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 30 April - 30 May 2019
I've set the rainfall axis to 50mm or about 2in as this is around average for May so we should have a full column of blue adding up the month's rainfall. Currently the total stands at 35.0mm (1.4in), which doesn't sound too bad but most of that has fallen in amounts that do nothing but wet the top of the ground before evaporating away.
The table below shows the amount of rainfall we've had in the previous 12 months at the end of each month from January 2011 to May 2019. We'd expect around 600mm (24 in) over the year but at the moment it stands at just over 400mm (16in) and we're experiencing one of the drier periods of the last 10 years.
At the plot on Tuesday afternoon what looked like a heavy shower passed close by the allotment.
Of course close by isn't good enough and the allotment is dry and would benefit greatly from either a good downpour or a steady day's rain. Whilst a sprinkling from a shower doesn't do much in the way of watering the allotment it does keep the surface moist enough for slugs and snails to go on marauding night time raids. They'd managed to find our newly planted brassicas.
Savoy cabbage - Sabrosa
Cabbage - Red Lodero
The forecast is for more showers and some rather cool days up to the weekend before the weather turns briefly warmer. The forecast for the first couple of weeks of June is for the weather to be unsettled and who knows maybe we will even get some "proper" rain.