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Thursday 15 May 2014

Yorkshire Wildlife Park

Thursday was a lovely mild day, dry and with lots of sunny spells.

We’d decided earlier in the week that if the weather was suitable we’d visit the Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster. This park made both local and national headlines when it re-homed 13 lions from a zoo in Romania.  The Park took on 13 which had been housed in very cramped conditions in small pens with concrete floors and iron bars. The lions now have far more spacious accommodation.

The Wildlife Park is home to many more animals besides the lions many of them have also been re-homed from other zoos where they have become surplus to requirements.

They certainly seem to have been given plenty of space at the wildlife park. The lions certainly seem to appreciate their new home and look to really enjoy their relaxed lifestyle now.

There are some other big cats too and these also have large paddocks to roam around in. The one below was just finishing of his “Whiskas” for lunch before an afternoon nap.

Friday 16 May 2014

Warmest Day This Year but for How Long?

Friday was the best day of spring this year. It turned out to be the warmest day of the year so far with the afternoon temperature managing an impressive 24.1°C.

The forecast is for the same again on Saturday and Sunday with a change to more unsettled weather returning on Monday. The warmest May day I’ve recorded was 28 May 2012 when the temperature reached 28.0°C.

Saturday 17 May 2014

A Tad Warmer Today

Saturday was another excellent May day with a maximum temperature of 24.7°C, a tad warmer than Friday, making it our warmest day of the year.

We’ve plenty to do on the plot so we decided on an afternoon of planting and tidying up. To be honest it was a bit too warm to be doing much more than sowing or planting, not that I’m complaining about this lovely weather you understand.

Sue planted out these broad beans “Masterpiece Green Longpod”. The plants looked nice and healthy as they left the cold frame with no signs of any pest problems but now they’re in the plot all that changes. The sprayer contains our homemade garlic spray which was used on the plants to see if we can reduce the damage being done by weevils. These beans are planted next to our earlier variety “Witkeim Manita” which have been badly attacked by the weevils. I also water all the beans with a seaweed based liquid foliar feed to hopefully give the plants an extra boost to help our early planting grow through the weevil attack and the newly transplanted ones avoid any setback.

I also transplanted out our early cabbage plants “Hispi”. These have been planted alongside the plants bought from Marshalls in early spring to hopefully provide us with some cabbages and calabrese.

This certainly looks promising as our Marshall’s cabbages are already beginning to show signs of starting to form hearts just as our first home raised cabbages have been planted out. These too got the garlic spray and foliar feed treatment.

The final protection is to cover the whole bed with butterfly netting not only to keep the butterflies off but also the wood pigeons which can devastate a crop overnight if they get the chance.

Sunday 18 May 2014

Increasing in Tads and a Conundrum

Sunday continued our brilliant spell of weather pushing this year’s high up a tad more to 25.2°C.

Temperature and sunshine records from Friday 16 May 2014 to Sunday 18 May 2014

On Friday I posted a picture showing the comparison between our bought in Marshalls cabbage plants and my own plants raised from seed. It’s obvious that Marshalls plants are well in advance of my own seedlings and to save you looking back at yesterday’s post here’s the photo again.

The collection from Marshalls included cabbages, calabrese and cauliflowers. All the plants looked fine when they were potted on after arrival and all three types received the same treatment and conditions. My notes of the progress of each variety are included below.

On Sunday, alongside our bought in plants of “Mayflower”, Sue planted out our own cauliflower plants “Clapton” raised from seed.

It’s difficult to know which are which but the two rows on the right of the photo are “Clapton” our home produced seedlings. I can’t fault Marshalls plants as they were fine on arrival but once potted on the seedlings just refused to grow. Is it the compost? I think I used the same bag of compost for all the plants but I can’t be sure. The “Mayflower” plants do look to be getting a little bit of colour back into their leaves after being planted in the plot a couple of weeks ago so there is still hope for them. For what it is worth my money is on the problem being down to the compost.

Monday 19 May 2014

A First for Us

Monday was another glorious day although we had a few spots of rain in the afternoon, as though we were about to get a downpour, which didn’t materialise.

We’ve had a grapevine of one variety or another growing in our home greenhouse for as long as I can remember. The amazing thing about this is that it never seems to suffer from any pest. That is until this year.

Something’s had a serious nibble at this leaf. The leaf is almost touching the glass and growing along the ridge of the greenhouse. I couldn’t find any sign of pests on the leaf so I’m a little undecided what’s caused the damage. Obviously it found the veins of the leaf a little tough. Is it caused by a slug or a snail but if so why has it climbed or slithered all that way passing other delicacies on the way?

I’ll need to keep a look out to see if any further damage occurs.

Our first baby blackbirds have fledged and are busy following their parents around the garden begging for food.

It’s lovely to see these young birds but it’s rather sad that we haven’t seen Hoppy for a few days now. Perhaps he’s found it difficult to hold his own in the fight for food against other birds who are looking to feed their youngsters.

Tuesday 20 May 2014

Up in Tads Now down in Tads

There was a lot more cloud about on Tuesday especially in the morning when the sun didn’t bother to make an appearance. We had a few spots of rain around lunchtime which didn’t amount to anything. Then the sun came out and the afternoon was much brighter. We did have some rain mid evening but it only amounted to 0.8mm. The temperature continued to be mild for May although it’s fallen back a bit from its high of 25.2°C on Sunday with Tuesday’s high reaching 22.4°C.

Temperature and Sunshine Records for Wednesday 14 May 2014 to Tuesday 20 May 2014

A return to more normal Spring temperatures is going to be a shock to the system.

On the plot the grass continues to grow amazingly quickly and it got another trim in the afternoon. Some parts of the plot are now fully planted up and it won’t be too long now before we can begin harvesting some of our early cabbages.

Other parts of the plot are still awaiting their summer crops of sweet corn, French and runner beans, and courgettes.

The bed in the foreground is already planted up with potatoes which are beginning to push their way through the soil but the remaining two beds need a quick tilling  job on them before they are ready for planting up. A little drop of rain might help the tilling process a little as the soil in the middle bed has cracks developing in the surface due to the dry and warm weather. I realise I could easily regret wishing for a little rain.

Wednesday 21 May 2014

Homegrown Revolution Update

Regular followers of my blog will know that this year we are experimenting with a selection of produce picked from James Wong’s book Homegrown Revolution. We chose Inca Berries, Chinese Chives and Cucamelons to give us some variety amongst our normal crops. The details of sowing and potting on are shown in the table below.

So far so good as we’ve had no disasters and all three varieties have germinated. Due to rather poor germination, the most disappointing so far is the sowing of Chinese chives. It may be that more will germinate over the next week or so and I still have more seeds so definitely not a disaster and hopefully we’ll have something to try.

My original plan was to grow these to maturity in this terracotta pot but I will need to seriously review this as these are described as deep rooted plants that should be planted in soil enriched with plenty of organic matter. The good news is that six plants will provide more than enough flowers and leaves for the average family. I might not need to sow any more seeds after all.

Next in the table are cucamelons. These are supposed to be easier to grow than outdoor cucumbers being more cold tolerant than cucumbers. They need support as they grow as tall vines and the suggestion is that they should have their main growing shoot pinched out once they reach 2.5m.

The cucamelons have just moved from under the indoor growlight into the cold greenhouse. They grew a little slowly after germination but they are now growing extremely quickly. They will be potted on over the next few days into reasonably large pots where they can grow on before planting out in the plot. Hopefully we will be picking cucamelons by the beginning of August and they should continue to fruit until the first frosts.

Finally our Inca berries are also doing well. They too went through a stage where they seemed to stop growing soon after they had been transplanted. They’re growing really well now though, probably due to the warm spell of weather or hot in the case of our Inca berry plants as they’re growing in the greenhouse where it been exceptionally hot through this recent spell of good weather even with the door and windows wide open.  

Inca berries should be grown on similarly to tomato plants except that they should produce a good crop outside in the plot or grown on in tubs. I’ve still to decide exactly how to progress to the next stage but perhaps I’ll try some in pots and other planted directly in the plot. The berries should be ready to harvest by late summer or early autumn.

Finally the weather. Wednesday was another sunny mild day but in the early hours of Thursday morning the well forecasted rain arrived.

By 10:00 Thursday morning we’ve had 8.8mm making it the wettest day of the month. We need another 1.0mm then surprisingly it will become our wettest day of the year which currently stands at 12 February 2014 with 9.6mm.