Tuesday morning got off to a poor start, cloudy,dull and murky weather but all that changed mid morning as the sun broke through. By the middle of the afternoon. As I cut the grass I already had my blog post planned as this must easily be the warmest day of the year.
Once the grass was cut I moved on to giving the pond filter its first clean out of the season. It certainly needed it. I’m amazed at how much material is trapped by the filtration system that would otherwise remain in the pond. All the contents of the filter are emptied onto the garden and the plants don’t seem to mind at all. The fish also got their first meal since last autumn. Our fish are extra special fish with much better memories than your average fish which allegedly can only remember things for up to 5 seconds. A nice mild day and our fish were at the pond side begging for food. Our frog spawn has disappeared. We are not sure whether or not it has spawned or our fish have gobbled it up as a tasty meal because I haven’t been feeding them.
Around the pond edge our “bonsaied” gunnera is now breaking out of its winter dormancy. I really need to give it a bigger pot this year. Its a catch twenty two situation as the smaller the pot the more watering is required in summer but I’m guessing that a bigger pot will result in a much bigger plant and the same amount of watering and feeding. At least it would get some fresh compost if I move it into a bigger pot.
As it turned out I was wrong about it being the warmest day of the year as that record is still held by 9th March at 18.6°C a smidgeon higher than Tuesday’s 18.3°C.
Wednesday 02 April 2014
April Fool
Tuesday’s excellent start to April was obviously an April fool by the weather maker as Wednesday was a poor day by any standards.
As you can see from the chart above the temperature on Wednesday didn’t even manage double figures after the lovely mild 18°C of Tuesday. The sun never thought about breaking through the cloud and it stayed dull and cold all day. I did consider sowing a few seeds in the greenhouse but it was only marginally warmer in there so I decided not to bother hoping for a better day to come along soon. As you can see the chart includes Thursday until 09:00 and there doesn’t appear to be any change at the moment. The forecast for Friday holds out hope of a return to different if not better conditions.
Temperature and Sunshine from 01 April 2014 - 09:00 on Thursday 03 April 2014
Thursday 03 April 2014
Drabness Goes On
Thursday was another cold drab day. It didn’t have any spring like characteristics associated with it. It tends to be a bit annoying when the weather forecast is read out on TV includes such phrases as “continuing mild” as it hasn’t been mild here for a couple of days now. Night time and day time temperatures have almost become one with only a couple of degrees centigrade variation between night and day.
Temperature and Sunshine from 01 April 2014 - 21:00 on Thursday 03 April 2014
As you can easily see from the chart Wednesday and Thursday have produced very similar weather and it hasn’t been very good. I’m hoping that the weekend will bring some sort of improvement.
I’m running out of pictures as they are pretty difficult to capture in such dull drab conditions. I thought I’d post this picture of our camellia which was pruned severely in early summer 2011.
You can just make out the main stump of sawn off branches of the camellia at the back of this photograph. I did have a few doubts once I’d hacked it back so drastically but after a couple of years recovering it’s now looking good. One thing about gardening is you never know until you try something a bit different whether it will work or not. Luckily in this case it did and a shrub that had become far too big has been saved from the compost heap
Friday & Saturday 04/05 April 2014
Ducks and Geese Galore!
Friday and Saturday didn’t produce anything very special for April weatherwise. Friday was the better of the two days as the dull and drab weather of the last few days eventually moved away.
We’d planned a long early weekend away. The plan was to travel to WWT Slimbridge Wetlands leaving Ossett early Friday morning to give us all afternoon to explore the reserve. After staying in Gloucestershire overnight, we planned to move on to Didcot Railway Centre for their special event “Blue is the Colour” which was featuring three blue steam locomotives. In the event we only managed Slimbridge as we weren’t at all convinced the weather was going to play ball on Saturday morning so we made an early start for home.
I have to be honest WWT Slimbridge wasn’t at all what I was expecting but it made a fantastic afternoon’s photography with a mixture of captive ducks and geese from around the world mixed together with our “native species”. As you wander around the centre there are lots of large style farm gates to go through. Each one has to be opened and closed behind you and you soon realise why as at each gate there will be ducks or geese fancying their chances of getting through the gate to a section of the reserve they shouldn’t be in. It’s funny going around a reserve where some of the birds come to meet you rather than you having to look for them.
We spent some time photographing the many new - to us - species before we headed for the kingfisher hide where if we were lucky we hoped to photograph a kingfisher. The hide was quite busy with all the cameras, videos and binoculars trained on the spot where a kingfisher might arrive and perch. Mrs Mallard arrived with her newly born family of what look like a baker’s dozen of ducklings. It was decision time. Risk missing a kingfisher whilst getting some pictures of this lovely family. I couldn’t turn down such an opportunity.
Then a kingfisher arrived perching close to its nesting hole in the bank.
How much zoom to use? How long will it stay? Can I hold the camera even steadier? Should I try some video too? After years of waiting to see a kingfisher to photograph we’ve now had two opportunities in a week.
I did try some video which is shown below. I have to say that the continuous clicking of camera shutters on the video are not from either of our cameras. Ours are almost silent when working. I would have thought that the noise some cameras make is enough to scare birds away when taking photos at close quarters.
Sue has posted more about our visit to Slimbridge and some of her kingfisher photos on her blog here.
Sunday 06 April 2014
Tomato and Pepper Sowing Day
Sunday was mostly dull although it was a pleasantly mild day.
I thought it was about time I sowed our tomato and pepper seeds. I’m hoping my timing is judged so that they will be able to germinate indoors under our growlight before moving on into the greenhouse to grow on through the summer without receiving a check due to a coldish spell of weather.
Date Sown
Date Germination
Days
Seeds Sown
Variety
Location
Comments
06/Apr/2014
Cabbage Spring
Hispi
Greenhouse
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06/Apr/2014
Cauliflower
Clapton
Greenhouse
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06/Apr/2014
Peppers
King of the North
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06/Apr/2014
Peppers
Orange Bull
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06 Apr 2014
Tomatoes
Alicante
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06 Apr 2014
Tomatoes
Amish Gold
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06 Apr 2014
Tomatoes
Brandy Boy Hybrid
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06 Apr 2014
Tomatoes
Kings of Colour
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06 Apr 2014
Tomatoes
Sioux
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
06 Apr 2014
Tomatoes
Sungold
Growlight
Sown in 1/4 seed tray
Together with the tomatoes and peppers I sowed some early cabbages and cauliflowers but these were left in the greenhouse to germinate.
I spent some time in the “darkroom” processing the several hundred photographs and videos taken at WWT Slimbridge last Friday. I was rather impressed by the size of this seed feeder and the size of the birds using it.
List of Sowing and Planting on 06 April 2014
Monday 07 April 2014
Another Day Seed Sowing in the Greenhouse
Monday was mild again and we had times when the sun broke through the clouds followed by typical April showers.
As the weather didn’t seem to be able to make its mind up one way or the other I decided to get some more sowing done out of the showers in the greenhouse. I thought I might be a bit behind sowing seeds but checking out last season’s sowing dates that’s not the case and in general last year we had a good year on the plot. Any problems weren’t down to sowing too late.
My main task of the day was to get our sweet peas sown. This year Sue’s gone for named varieties so they’ve all been carefully positioned and labelled in their trays. Funny how the black text on the individual packets has completely disappeared in the photo. It’s a good job I wasn’t relying on it for identification. Our sweet pea varieties are all listed here.
Each tray contains two varieties and there were nine varieties altogether so this shows half of the sowing with the seeds covered with vermiculite after each seed was pushed into the compost.
All our seeds will need a little bit of warmth to get them to germinate successfully. It only takes a little bit of sunshine to warm the greenhouse but so far this month it’s been in very short supply.
This chart shows how many hours of sunshine my weather station has recorded since July 2010. At the end of the first week of April it’s recorded a meagre 10.1 hours of sunshine only. So if there’s no improvement for the rest of the month we’d be looking at around 40 hours of sunshine which would be very low for April. My guess is that things can only improve.
