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Wednesday & Thursday 08/09 January 2014

Now We Get Some Rain

As the rest of the UK was starting to dry out and de-flood we had our wettest day since 20 November 2013 with 15.2mm of rain falling late Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday morning.

The forecast for the weekend is looking good with some dry, sunny but cooler weather. There still seems to be some doubts about a spell of proper colder winter weather by the middle of next week. It seems the weather models used by the forecasters keep changing their minds. I suppose we’ll soon find out one way or another.

Friday 10 January 2014

First Shoots

Friday wasn’t a bad sort of a day, a bit nondescript really, no sun, no wind, no rain but once again mildish for early January.

When our raspberry canes arrived from Ashridge Nurseries we received some free crocus (Remembrance) bulbs. These were planted up in a large pot and left on the patio.

It’s taken them just one month to send up some shoots. We’ve put them on the patio so they’ll be in full view from the house when they come into flower.

There’s not very much to see right now but it’s a reminder that we’ll soon be able to start sowing for the new season’s flowers and vegetables.

Saturday 11 January 2014

First Harvest of 2014

The forecast for Saturday was for a nice sunny but rather cool day which it turned out to be, although the sunshine was rather limited. We’d decided on a visit to the plot if the forecast was anything like correct as we needed to pick some vegetables.

As the weather was pretty good I decided I would winter wash the fruit trees. It’s a job that needs doing in the winter months when there are no leaves on the trees, ideally in January and again in February. The idea is to attempt to kill of any over wintering bugs.

Winter wash mixed, I began spraying but the job didn’t go very smoothly and after about 10 minutes a blockage in the sprayer stopped it working altogether. My hands were getting a little bit cold by this time and I didn’t fancy having to clean out the nozzle of the sprayer under freezing cold water so I decided to put the job on hold and get on harvesting some vegetables.

It wasn’t a bad harvest for the beginning of January with carrots, parsnips, beetroot, leeks, cabbage and Brussels sprouts completing our first harvest of the year. Full details of our harvest are can be found here and these pages will be updated through the growing and harvesting season.

Overnight Saturday into Sunday morning produced the coldest night of 2014 and the lowest temperature of winter so far with a low of minus 2.1°C

Sunday 12 January 2014

Coldest Day of Winter

After Sunday morning’s frost and the temperature falling to -2.1°, Sunday finished the coldest day of winter so far with an average temperature of 1.4°C.

With the cost of renting allotments on the up I thought it might be interesting to add some costs to my harvesting list for this year. I for one don’t grow my own because I think I can make a great deal of money from it, it’s far more about the enjoyment of growing my own. I wouldn’t change what I grow from one crop than another to make more profit.  I consider allotmenting to be one of my main hobbies and as such it doesn’t have to make a profit at the end of the year.

My early guess is that soft fruit will be where most money is made rather than vegetables but I wouldn’t want to go without that first harvest of new potatoes which just cannot be bought in the shops.

If I can manage to keep up with the task it might be interesting to see the results at the end of the year.

Based on Saturday’s first harvest of the year the record table starts off looking like this. I’ve now got to decide how I might keep a record of the costs as there’s not only the allotment rent to take into account but the costs of seeds, compost and fertilisers to take into account.

Monday 13 January 2014

A Visit to Potteric Carr

The forecast for Monday was good so we decided on a visit to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserve at Potteric Carr. It’s somewhere we haven’t visited before but it’s been on our list of places to visit for a while now.

It was a lovely sunny day but a little bit on the chilly side but not feeling too cold in the sunshine. However, as nice as the sunshine was it did make taking photographs a bit of a challenge. All the best shots seemed to be directly into the sun putting the subject of the photograph in dark shade.

No problems capturing this grey squirrel enjoying a nut whilst sitting on felled branch of silver birch.

All the usual suspects were about helping themselves to seed on the feeders a short distance away from the Kingfisher Tearooms.

There are plenty of different trails to follow around the reserve. We chose one of the longer routes, “the Wetland Walk” around some of the marshy areas of the reserve.

We did manage to spot one bird we hadn’t seen before, a little egret, but it was a very distant view but we did just about manage a photograph with cameras at maximum zoom.

We both enjoyed our walk around the reserve and decided that it would probably be worth our while to become members of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust as well as supporting the trust we’re both looking forward to some return visits

We also took the opportunity to do a little more camera comparisons but I’ll save those pictures for another post.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Camera Shoot Out!

Tuesday was another lovely January day but after a good day out yesterday it was a case of getting on with a few other jobs today.

I managed to sort out our seed orders with Thompson and Morgan and Plants of Distinction to complete our main seed orders. I’m sure we’ll add a few more items on our various visits to garden centres. The seed list has been added to our web site and can be viewed here.

On our last visit to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserve at Potteric Carr we had a bit of a shoot out between our two cameras with them set on maximum zoom settings. There’s quite a bit involved in getting a good 1200mm zoom shot not least of which is holding the camera steady but for the record all these shots were hand held and didn’t involve using a tripod.

Just to set the scene there wasn’t a lot to see from this hide but at the far side of the lake is a marker post to give an indication of the water level. I’ve circled it in red. The challenge, who could get the best close up shot of the marker. At least it wouldn’t fly away so an easier first test.

We moved on further around the reserve and watching from another hide we spotted what we thought might be a little egret. It needs a zoom lens or telescope to even identify the bird correctly.

This is the standard wide angle lens shot from the hide looking over to one of the small island in the lake where the little egret was preening.

None of the above photographs have been digitally edited they are as downloaded from the camera apart from the red marker added in Adobe Photoshop Elements. They have been resized from the large 5.76Mb original zoomed image to a more manageable web image of 80kB.

The images could be “tweaked” to improve them further in a suitable photo editing package.