I’m sure readers in other parts of Britain will have had much worse weather in the first half of winter than we’ve had in Ossett.
For us the most significant aspect of the winter as we arrive at the midpoint has been how mild it’s been. So far frosts have been very infrequent and we certainly haven’t had any harsh frosts.
These geraniums are growing in our neighbour’s front garden, I hope he won’t mind me taking this picture of them, but as you can see they are still in flower almost in a state where they need dead heading in the middle of January. They are protected by a bay window which prevents them from becoming waterlogged.
Now it’s hasn’t all been wonderful as we had some very windy weather, especially in December and you can see from the chart above we’ve had rain on lots of days but no above average amounts. December itself produced less rainfall than we might expect but we’ve already had 81% of January’s rainfall with just one dry day recorded so it might turn out to be a wetter than average month.
The chart shows that so far we’ve only had three occasions where the temperature has fallen beneath the thick blue line representing 0°C.
In our front garden not far away from the still in flower geraniums our winter jasmine is in flower and beneath the carpet of dead leaves spring bulbs are pushing their way up through the soil.
In another part of the garden our banana plant (musa basjoo) is decidedly worse for wear but I’ve seen it looking an awful lot worse in the middle of winter.
Finally the above chart shows just how mild the winter’s been to date. I wonder what the second half has in store for us. Our local weatherman suggested tonight that the weather would more than likely continue in the same vein to the end of the month. Will that purple line on the chart fall below or stay above the red line for the winter of 2007 which was one of the mildest on record?
From the Met Office figures for the Central England Temperature database I think the top five mildest winters are as shown in the table below. The current average winter temperature for Ossett is 6.57°C so at the moment anything is possible.
Year
Average Temperature °C
1869
6.77
1834
6.53
1989
6.5
2007
6.43
1975
6.43
Thursday & Friday 16/17 January 2014
Wow! - Hope This Doesn’t Catch On.
Another couple of decent days for the middle of January with around average temperatures. Friday was fairly sunny and it finished up as being only our second day of the month without any measurable rainfall.
As you might know our allotments are in Wakefield (provided by Wakefield District Council) and rather worryingly I happened to come across this page on the Internet offering allotments for rent in Wakefield.
If Wakefield District Housing are charging £167.96 a year for a plot how long will it be before the Council decides to start charging similar prices? It doesn’t say how large the plots are but for that outlay on plot 18 you’ve got to clear the plot first. For that price it ought to come ready dug, planted and with a nice new shed.
Who knows perhaps they won’t get any takers at that price. I can see why it’s a rare opportunity!
If you read Sue’s blog you’ll know that we spotted a female blackcap in the garden for the first time on Thursday afternoon. It’s more than likely that she’s a migrant and on her way to some other final destination but we wondered if she might stick around in the garden for another day and we weren’t disappointed.
I also managed to get a little bit of video before the light faded too much.
It would be nice if she could attract a male blackcap into the garden before she heads off for her next destination.
Saturday 18 January 2014
First Arrivals
Saturday was dull and mild again. It seemed rather damp and drizzly for most of the day but our actual rainfall only amounted to 1.0mm.
After finishing off our seed order last week the first package from Plants of Distinction arrived in the post on Saturday.
All I’ve got to do now is to resist the temptation to sow any seeds until the end of March or beginning of April. I’ll see lots of comments on blogs, twitter, Facebook as well in gardening magazines about sowing seeds much earlier. For me I’ve found it doesn’t work. I’ve no issue with sowing seeds indoors and getting them to germinate and most seeds given a nice warm indoor temperature will germinate in a few days. What then? How do I stop those little seedlings becoming weak, straggly long legged seedlings. Anything remotely tender doesn’t want to be moved to our cold greenhouse before the end of March or early April. So any early seedlings get off to a poor start by being sown too early and becoming leggy.
These young tomato seedlings that germinated under our indoor growlight were sown on 30 March and had grown into tall leggy seedlings by 12 April. I don’t know where I would grow them on if they were sown in January or February.
Just so I feel I’ve made a start I might sow some “Bistro Mixed” salad leaves under the indoor growlight where they can grow on to crop before the space is required for starting off tomato and pepper sowings.
Sunday 19 January 2014
A Bit of Plotting
Sunday afternoon turned out to be quite nice after a drop of overnight rain had left us with a dull and damp morning. We made the most of the good weather to do a little bit of plotting.
This is one of the beds cleared and dug in autumn which had been planted up with our mini annual flower area last summer. My plan was to cover this bed with weed control fabric and then use it for growing brassicas this year. I can’t remember this patch of land growing any brassicas, as for many years it was part of our perennial dahlia bed where the tubers were left in the ground to overwinter, so I’m hoping that this patch will be club root free and our brassicas will grow unchecked.
In the picture above the soil doesn’t look in too bad a condition but in this case the picture doesn’t tell the whole story. January has been a wet month to date and the ground is very wet. Fortunately I’m able to cover the bed without having to stand on the soil itself working from the paths around the bed.
By the time the sun was setting I’d managed to get more bare ground covered than I’d planned. Barrowing the manure from the allotment stockpile to the plot was a bit of a chore. The stockpile of manure had soaked up all the recent rain and had turned into a proper squelchy heap sticking to boots, fork and wheelbarrow tyre and weighing about twice what you might expect.
I just had some time to dig a few carrot, parsnips and leeks to finish off a fairly productive Sunday afternoon especially as Sue had given our Tayberry its winter trim.
Monday 20 January 2014
Something Different
After a cold and frosty start Monday was a lovely winter’s day.
We’d decided on something different though for this week and have started redecorating the dining room and study. Today was wallpaper removal day. After lots of steaming and scraping most but not all the wallpaper has been removed.
We’ve got the trickiest bits left to do in the study. I say tricky because we have to remove the wallpaper from behind both our computer desks. In my case that means the live transfer of weather data and computer will have to be put on hold whilst all the electrics are turned off, wiring moved out of the way and computer moved so the wallpaper can be steamed off.
We had one little mishap today when the web cam that captures my weather station view up the path towards the greenhouse fell of its windowsill. I don’t know whether or not it showed a strange image on my live weather data stream or not last night. When it is dark outside the camera picks up reflections in the window and at the moment there are no curtains to draw to prevent this.
Fortunately my weather station will still hold all the weather data in its memory until it is reconnected to my computer so the stored data can be downloaded to keep my records as accurate as possible.
