Friday, 09 November 2018
Settled Weather Results In Allotment Progress
So far the settled weather conditions that we've enjoyed ever since last May and which brought us a hot dry summer have continued into autumn. However, there seems to be a chance that this is coming to an end with wet and windy weather arriving in off the Atlantic Ocean over the weekend.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 10 October to 09 November 2018
The dry spell of weather has allowed us to complete many of the jobs we wanted to do on the plot before any really nasty winter weather set in. A couple of bonfires to get rid of piles of dry prunings, cleared away lots of dry debris and we've managed to dig over most of our beds for winter a job we didn't manage to do last year. Sue has covered most of our allotment activities in her post A Touch of Frost.
Wednesday has been our wettest day of the month with 3.6mm (0.14in) of rain bringing the monthly total up to 4.2mm (0.17in) which is a pretty dry start to November.
More unsettled weather is forecast over the weekend bringing some wet and windy weather but then it looks like more settled weather will return by the middle of next week. We've a couple more beds that we'd like to sort out at the allotment and providing we don't get too much rain over the weekend we might be able to do that next week.
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
A Let Off
We hadn’t visited the plot for a week as we’d been busy with other things. At the end of last week we had a visit to Potteric Carr and had a walk around the nature reserve.
Yorkshire Wildlife Trust - Potteric Carr Nature Reserve
Then on Saturday I took Sue train chasing in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. On the way to the Dales it was pleasantly sunny but by the time we arrived at Dent Head Viaduct there was a lot more cloud about. There was just about enough light to capture some video footage of the train heading over the viaduct.
Dent Head Viaduct
The wet and windy forecast for the weekend never really materialised and the dry and mild November weather continued. A month's expected rainfall is equivalent to one full column of blue over the month or around 50mm (2in).
Temperature & Rainfall Records 14 October - 13 November 2018
At the allotment we wanted to clear the bed where our sweet peas and some annual flowers for cutting had grown over summer. As we didn’t get too much rain over the weekend I wasn’t anticipating any problems digging over the bed once it was cleared of dead flower stems.
August 2018
It didn’t take long to clear away. The waste material was used to start a new compost heap. Once that was done we could make a start digging over the bed. We had a couple of interruptions from light rain showers and made use of one of the interruptions to have a cup of coffee.
We would have liked to harvest some leeks, carrots and parsnips but the weather didn’t play fair as it came on to rain heavily. We abandoned the idea of harvesting anything and headed for home.
In between the showers, drinking coffee and doing some digging we managed to make a video of our afternoon at the plot.