As you will have noticed from our parsnip reveal we have covered our carrots and parsnips with straw to give them protection from any frosty winter weather.
Friday, 02 November 2018
A Frosty End to October
October ended with some cold frosty nights which meant that despite a reasonably mild start to the month the average temperature for October finished a little bit below average.
Average October Temperatures 2010 - 2018
For us it resulted in the earliest frosts since 2010 when I began keeping records.
Hour by Hour Temperatures for Octobers 2010 - 2018
The chart above shows that we had 8 hours of temperatures below 0°C (32.0°F) this October and that no other Octobers in the table have had any temperatures so low.
Rainfall for October was very marginally below average. Most of the months rain came in two wet days around the middle of the month and since then it has been more or less dry with just a few very light showers.
October Rainfall 2010 - 2018
It's meant that we've had some good weather for tidying up the allotment before any proper winter weather sets in.
We've made some good progress at getting some autumn digging in and the dry conditions meant we could get some tree prunings burnt and out of the way.
We decided to check on our parsnips to see if the roots were anything like as good as the tops.
Saturday, 03 November 2018
Making the Most of the Fine Weather
With the weather forecast for wet and windy conditions over the weekend I thought it would be a good idea to lift our dahlia tubers. All the foliage had been blackened by the frosts last week. We haven’t had any rain to speak of for a couple of weeks now so I was reckoning on the tubers being reasonable dry and in good condition for winter storage.
It was a lovely November afternoon and whilst I was lifting dahlia roots Sue was planning on getting another bed dug over.
The ground was certainly on the dry side in our perennial bed but that made the job of digging out the roots so much easier.
It didn’t take me too long to lift the roots and I removed as much loose soil from around the tubers as I could without doing any damage to them.
I’d planned to empty one of our compost bays and add the material to one of the beds dug over last week. There wasn’t as much good compost as I’d hoped. The material on top of the heap had remained dry through the long hot summer rather than breaking down. I added all the suitable material I could find to one of the beds dug last week. There was enough to cover about one half of the bed.
Sue thought that the bed she had dug over would be better left uncovered for the winter weather to break it down for next spring.
The weed control fabric has been rolled up and left at the end of the bed.
Once we’d finished digging beds and lifting dahlias it was time to do a little harvesting. We needed a cabbage and as all our late summer cabbages are now finished we cut our first Kilaton autumn cabbage.
Once we’d dug a few carrots and picked a few spinach leaves it’s was time to get our dahlia tubers loaded into the car and head home.
I’m planning on drying the dahlia tubers off in the greenhouse before storing them in potato sacks in the garage over winter. This method worked well last year so I’m going to give it another try this winter.
Perhaps the weekend weather won’t be as bad as it’s forecast to be and we’ll be able to get some more plotting done.
Of course there's a video to go with the afternoon's jobs.