Monday, 23 September 2019
A Wet Day - At Last!
Sunday was our wettest day since the end of July. Not that we had any great amount of rain 10.8mm (0.43in) all together but it almost doubled this month's rainfall which now stands at 23.2mm or 0.91in. The month's previous rainfall has all come in small amounts which don't do any good as far as watering the garden or allotment are concerned.
Temperature & Rainfall Details for 22 September 2019
The morning rainfall came as heavy showers with the first one setting a record for this year as the heaviest rainfall of the year at 90mm/hr or 3.54in/hr. Fortunately it only lasted for a few minutes.
Hopefully, there will have been enough rainfall for us to make a start at digging over a few empty beds on the allotment.
Plots 41 & 42
Most of our potatoes were dug up at the end of August and the ground was very dry and didn't dig over very well at all so we decided to leave digging over empty beds until we got some decent rainfall.
The fruit season on the allotment has almost come to an end now. It began with rhubarb followed by strawberries, gooseberries, tayberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries, blueberries, plums, greengages and finally apples and pears which we harvested during the week.
Egremont Russet
We've still a few more apples to pick but that will hopefully be completed this week, the only problem will be finding somewhere to store them. Normally, the final fruit of the season to be harvested would be our quinces but this year we've had a crop failure with our Meeches Prolific failing to live up to its name and not producing any fruits at all.
Our remaining brassicas, carrots and parsnips will all remain in the ground over winter and be harvested as required. The carrots and parsnips will be covered with straw to protect them from the worst of any frosts and to help lifting them should any spells of prolonged cold weather occur through winter. Autumn has arrived!
Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Drought Over - Equal Wettest Day of the Year
Following on from Sunday, Tuesday was another wet day equalling the wettest day of the year with 18.2mm or 0.72in.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 24 September 2019
It tied with 28 July this year when we had the same amount of rainfall. Our main weather records for this year are listed in the table below.
It's probably as well that I lifted the last of our potatoes on Monday which were dry enough to store in hessian sacks after drying off on the grass for a couple of hours.
The ground should be moist enough now to start some autumn digging.
Sunday, 29 September 2019
Wouldn't You Just Know It!
It seems incredible that it was only a week ago that the allotment was too dry to contemplate autumn digging. Now after a wet week it may well be too wet. We haven't visited since the rain started but over the last week we've had 68.2mm (2.7in) of rain. That's well over a month's worth of rain since last Monday.
Temperature & Rainfall Data 23-29 September 2019
Last Tuesday was the equal wettest day of the year but that has now been superseded by Sunday with 20.4mm (0.8in) of rainfall.
Needless to say we haven't done much on the plot with all the rain but we did visit the North Yorkshire Moors Railway Autumn Gala and rather unsurprisingly it rained there too.
