Saturday 22 February 2014
New for Old!
Plenty of sunshine on Saturday and according to the thermometer it was mild but it didn’t feel it on an afternoon walk around the grounds of Temple Newsam Estate in Leeds
It was only a short walk as lots of maintenance work is being carried out to dredge the lake and the surrounding footpaths are closed until the work is completed.
Obviously this large tree didn’t make it through the last storm. This is coppicing on a grand scale by natural forces. In other parts of the estate spring bulbs are starting to put on a pretty display.
The rain held off all day it was just a shame the wind was so strong. Sheltered from the strong gusty wind it was possible to think that spring might be on its way.
Sunday 23 February 2014
Two Dry Days in a Row!!
Sunday was dull, mild and for the second day in a row we didn’t have any rain. That wasn’t at all in line with the weather forecast which was for rain for most of the day. Amazingly it’s the first time we’ve had two dry days in a row since 10th and 11th December last year.
After setting our potatoes to chit in the greenhouse I made the most of the warm afternoon to get some more onion sets into modules for growing on before they are set out on the plot. I managed to find space for a couple of modules of Stuttgarter but I’m now a bit stuck until I can finish the repairs to the greenhouse roof. I’ve no more greenhouse space left guaranteed not to get wet when it rains.
We’ve now got two modules planted up with Stuttgarter together with a module each of Red Karmen, Rumba and Sturon. My aim is to plant two modules of each variety. These will hopefully produce our main onion crop with the remainder of the sets closely planted out to produce a crop of smaller onions.
Monday 24 February 2014
Hat Trick
Following on from a rainless Saturday and Sunday, Monday too turned out to be precipitation free. The sun came out in the morning and the promise of spring was showing as our miniature Tête-
As we are looking after our part time dog Tivvy we decided to make the most of a lovely sunny day and have a walk around Roundhay Park in Leeds.
Lots of other visitors had decided to make the most of a fine day. Lots were walking their dogs, others were feeding the masses of gulls and ducks on the lake.
The gulls were great viewing as they took off from the water only to land again in a great squabbling mass where food was thrown for them. The geese had a far more tranquil attitude in trying to secure their food supply from their personal supermarket by the lakeside.
We spent the afternoon watching the bird life feeding and having a walk around the lakes. By the time we decided to head for home and miss the rush hour traffic around Leeds the sun had disappeared and the wind made it suddenly feel much cooler.
Tuesday 25 February 2014
Starting by Default
The “dry” spell didn’t last into Tuesday as we had some early morning rain and a couple of light showers as it got dark. Only amounting to 0.8mm it didn’t add much to our monthly total.
I don’t really consider our gardening season to have started yet but by default it has. We’ve got onions and shallots planted into modules to give them an early start and our newly arrived potatoes are chitting away merrily in the home greenhouse despite it still missing a couple of very large panes of glass. Sue sowed her cyclamen Latinia -
Last week Sue and I were discussing what must be the trigger to let spring bulbs know it’s the time of year for them to begin pushing their leaves and flowers through the ground and provide us with those first welcoming signs of spring. We couldn’t really come up with any real ideas although we did notice that despite us thinking that our snowdrops were early this year they were more or less the same time as previous years.
I was starting to put together some of the weather charts for this winter which meteorologically speaking ends on Friday. Below is the chart for solar energy or sunshine record for the three winter months.
As the daylight increases gradually it very easy to underestimate the changes taking place. Looking at the chart its just about possible to tell that the amount of energy increase a little bit in January compared to December but once we hit February the changes are much greater. Perhaps nature is just much better at detecting these little changes than we are.
Wednesday 26 February 2014
Loads of Promise
Wednesday was another mild day with some morning sunshine before it clouded over around lunchtime resulting in a couple of afternoon showers.
Our potted apricot tree which stands outside our home greenhouse is full of promise of things to come.
It’s covered in flower buds just waiting to break open in a spell of nice weather. Of course there’s a long way to go from flowers to fruit with all sorts of pitfalls before we get our first ripe apricots. Last year, along with the peach and nectarine, the tree suffered badly from peach leaf curl and needed all its infected leaves removing. This meant in the case of the peach and nectarine, all their leaves. They did grow back a healthy set of fresh leaves through the summer. In an attempt to prevent the peach leaf curl this year our peach, nectarine and apricot trees were sprayed with a Bordeaux mixture today. It’s left a bit of a blue tinge on the bark of the tree which is just about visible in the photo.
Once the flowers open pollination will be the next hurdle as there aren’t many pollinating insects about this early in the year. I guess Sue will be out with her paint brush trying to make up for that lack of insects.
Thursday 27 February 2014
Shooting the Bishop
After some overnight rain, which carried through into the morning as showers, the day brightened up nicely to give us a sunny late morning and afternoon. It was a little breezy at times but it was mild again as the temperature almost made it into double figures reaching 9.8°C.
On our last visit to the garden centre we bought some shallots and dahlias. The shallots have been planted up into modules to get an early start before been transplanted out on the plot. I thought it was about time I put our dahlias into some compost to get them started too.
The Bishop of Llandaff, Mary Eveline, Edge of Joy and Sunshine were all put into large seed trays and covered with compost. If I’m lucky and they shoot quickly I may even have time to take some cuttings and gain a few extra plants.
I also managed to add to our onions sets by planting up a tray each of Rumba and an impressively named “Red” variety.
Of course now I’ve done this the forecast is for cold frosty weather which we seem to have avoided all winter but now planting time is here so is the frost. As a precaution I covered all our chitting seed potatoes and newly planted dahlias with a couple of layers of fleece. The onions are pretty tough and should be able to survive a cold night or two.
Friday 28 February 2014
In Short Not Extreme for Us
Friday wasn’t a bad day at all to end meteorological winter and move into spring. After a dull and rather murky start the sun came out resulting in a pleasant afternoon.
I can’t really say that winter has produced much extreme weather for us. The Met Office rainfall figures for England for the three winter months are 392.7mm and I’ve recorded only 208.8mm well short of the official amount. I’ve recorded wetter Decembers and Februarys although January’s rainfall was a record for that month.
Temperature wise we haven’t had the mildest or coldest winter day over the four year period I’ve been keeping records. Temperatures have been anything but extreme remaining very average throughout the entire winter period resulting in a mild winter. Only on nine occasions throughout winter has the temperature fallen below 0.0°C.
We have had some very windy spells on occasions with 05 December setting a new wind gust speed record of 42.0mph. January and February have both been very windy months.
So spring 2014 is here and I’m hoping it will be a bit better than last year which was very cold and held back the start of the growing season by several weeks.
