Friday 01 August 2014
Hot and Wet!
Friday got August off to a mixed start. It was a mild and muggy day with lots of cloud and a bit of light rain in the afternoon. We went for a walk around RSPB Fairburn Ings and had to take shelter in one of the hides for a few minutes whilst the rain shower passed over. The forecast heavy showers for the evening and overnight into Saturday didn’t materialise.
Although July has had some lovely sunny days with temperatures into the high twenties centigrade it’s finished a little cooler than last year which had an average temperature of 18.8°C compared to 18.3°C this July.
One rather strange weather fact for July is that it’s now our wettest month of the year averaging 68.3mm of rainfall over the last five years. You wouldn’t think we’d had a wet month looking around the allotment which seems to have taken on an autumnal look already.
I suppose the problem is that the rainfall tends to come in the form of heavy downpours rather than steady rainfall throughout the month. A bit like only giving plants a good watering a couple of times a month which doesn’t work.
After an excellent spell of weather in July it would be lovely if August continued in the same vein.
Saturday 02 August 2014
RSPB Fairburn Ings -
Saturday’s not got off to a very good start and it’s given me a bit of time to process yesterday’s photos and video from our visit to RSPB Fairburn Ings. The photos were easy to deal with as it mostly meant hitting the delete key. The video turned out better. After sheltering from some light rain at one point in the afternoon we spent 45 minutes at Pickup hide. For us that’s a long time at one spot. It was fascinating watching the sand martins wheeling around collecting insects before heading for the sand martin wall and into holes at amazing speed.
I’ve condensed our 45 minutes into a little over 7 minutes and managed to capture the sand martins feeding their young. It’s the first time we’ve seen sand martins.
Sue has posted some pictures from our visit here.
Does Size Matter?
The forecast for Saturday was correct. Whereas on Friday we more or less missed any rain and heavy showers that were about, we caught a couple on Saturday. Nothing too spectacular but I’m hoping the plot won’t need watering for a few days, although with the total rainfall for the two days amounting to 5.4mm I doubt it will have done much more than wet the surface.
In our home and plot greenhouses Sungold tomatoes are continuing to ripen quickly and are keeping us supplied with extra tasty bite size tomatoes for our salads.
The remaining varieties are much slower to ripen and up to now we’ve only managed a couple of ripe larger tomatoes. All these varieties are larger fruiting types and I’m wondering if they are slower ripening as they’ve got a lot of extra growing to do compared to cherry types.
This shows one of our larger Sungold tomatoes against a beefsteak tomato. Perhaps size really does matter after all.
Rightly or wrongly it seems to me that most things are starting to or even finishing cropping much earlier this year than normal. After picking the Sungold tomatoes in our home greenhouse I decided it might be time to try one of our Himrod grapes to see if they were sweet enough.
I only needed one to confirm that they still need a few more weeks of sunshine to complete the ripening process. Mind you I must admit that even in its unripe state this little grape had far more flavour than the cucamelon. We managed to pick another couple of fruits today and they didn’t do anything to change our opinion that they aren’t worth growing.
Sunday 03 August 2014
Onions!!
Sunday was a big improvement weather wise with some sunny spells and the temperature just nicely into the twenties centigrade. It was a bit blustery at times and on a couple of occasions some dark clouds made an appearance but cleared away again to give a bit more sunshine.
On the plot it was time to sort out our onions. We’ve had a few worries in the last few weeks about the state of our onion crop but although the remaining onion tops look a real mess the onions themselves all seem generally sound. Sue had eased the onions out of the ground a week or so ago so the task now was to set them out to dry.
In the past our first priority has been to keep them out of any rain and to do this we’ve found space in the plot greenhouse to store them. Sue has a concern that whilst we are still watering our plot tomatoes in the greenhouse this maintains a humid atmosphere inside and whilst the onions are out of the rain these might not be the best conditions for getting them to dry off for winter storage. So this year we are trying something different. I’ve just fixed some chicken wire frames above soil level to keep all our harvested onions off the ground.
Hopefully using this method the onions will soon dry off again and won’t resting on damp earth after any rain.
It’s a catch twenty two situation at the minute as we’d appreciate dry weather to dry off our onions and shallots but on the other hand the allotment needs some rain to keep our winter brassicas, sweet corn, runner beans, leeks, carrots and parsnips growing.
Monday 04 August 2014
Walking the Rail Trail
Monday was a lovely sunny day and we headed out into the North Yorkshire Moors National Park to walk the Rail Trail from Grosmont to Goathland.
The Rail Trail is a walk of about three miles following the route of George Stephenson's original railway line of 1836 when the mining of iron ore was a thriving industry around Grosmont. The original railway didn’t use steam locomotives and was eventually replaced after several fatal accidents as a result of a line breaking which was used to haul carriages up the steep incline from Beck Hole to Goathland.
As you walk along the Rail Trail the miners cottages are still occupied today. The path follows the valley of the Murk Esk passing through woodland and more open pasture land. In places it’s possible to see the steam locomotives making their way along the North Yorkshire Moors Railway between Grosmont and Goathland.
We decided to let the train take the strain on our return journey to Grosmont. We had time for a cup of coffee from the station’s tea room whilst we waited for our train along with lots of other tourists.
The train soon whisked us back to Grosmont where we’d parked the car and we began our journey back home.
Tuesday 05 August 2014
Drinking Styles
Tuesday for the most part was another lovely sunny summer day but it did spoil itself by clouding over and threatening to rain late into the afternoon.
In the morning I was side tracked by a young greenfinch being fed beneath our bird feeder from fallen sunflower seeds. A blackbird, starling and sparrow decided to have a drink from the bird bath so I made a little video. It’s interesting to watch the different drinking habits the birds have. The blackbird has a very delicate approach unlike the starling which dips its head into the water using its beak like a water scoop.
On the plot our broad bean plants were cut down and the old stalks added to the compost heap. As they’ve been grown through weed control fabric I’ve covered the bed with some manure from the allotment bay. It’s very fresh manure and I wouldn’t want to add it directly onto a bed that’s planted but the manure disappears before it’s had time to rot down so it’s a question of getting some when you can.
I’m now planning on leaving this bed over winter. In spring I’ll remove the weed control fabric and dig over the bed and incorporate the manure. Blimey it’s only the first week in August and I’ve a bed cleared and ready for winter.
Wednesday 06 August 2014
Overnight Rain
Wednesday wasn’t too bad a day. After overnight rain it turned out to be a rather windy sort of a day for August and with some sunny spells throughout the day the combination probably had the effect of drying the ground back out again.
The rainfall overnight amounted to 5.0mm. I didn’t think that was much given that our plots are now very dry and need a good watering. Our long beds on the plot are 10.0m long by 2.0m wide as shown in the photo taken a couple of weeks ago before our onions were lifted onto chicken wire frames.
Exactly how does 5.0mm of rainfall compare with me watering using my trusty 10 litre watering can. I think I’ve got the maths correct (if not please put me right) that my 10 litre watering can is equivalent to 10mm of rainfall if I empty the can over 1 square metre of ground. So our overnight rainfall of 5.0mm saves me from pouring 10 watering cans full over one of our large beds.
That’s not too bad on beds where the rainfall falls directly onto the ground but where large crops are growing such as sweet corn, sweet peas and squashes most of that rainfall probably isn’t going to get anywhere near the roots where it’s most needed.
Thursday 07 August 2014
Some You Win Some You Don’t
Thursday wasn’t a bad sort of a day but nothing special for August. A few sunny spells and a high temperature of 22.3°C.
Sue has some more wallflowers and sweet Williams to plant out in the plot for cut flowers for next year. I wasn’t looking forward to preparing a bed suitable for planting out knowing how dry the ground is at the moment. I took the cultivator down to the plot to attempt to prepare the allotted bed.
Now I have to admit that the soil in the picture to the right does look a little bit damper than the before image on the left. In truth it’s a bit like cultivating in gravel rather than soil. At a real pinch and using some compost to plant in it might be possible to plant out some young plants. The weather forecast is for heavy rain on Friday, Sunday and Monday so we decided to leave planting for a few days to see if some rain improves the condition of the soil.
We usually grow our runner beans up a wigwam made from bamboo canes. This year we wanted to try growing them through weed control fabric to cut down on weeding. Sue thought we ought to try something different to wigwams and grow the beans up canes placed in a long row rather than a circle. I didn’t fancy trying to form a circle and cut holes in the correct places for canes and plants to pass through weed control fabric. There seemed to be a lot of guess work involved for my liking so a sort of compromise was reached with each variety of bean planted in its own little tunnel of bamboo canes.
When the beans were planted out on 06 June the bed looked like this. The beans had taken up far more room than I had envisaged as we’d normally mange to fit our sweet corn crop into this size of bed as well. This year that was going to have to move. I wasn’t convinced that the beans would fill out the bed. On the plus side though it was easy to prepare the weed control fabric for this planting method. We planted a row of Inca berry plants along the centre of the bed to make it appear a little fuller.
I needn’t have worried. The beans have grown to fill up the bed and are producing masses of beans which are easier to pick than when grown up wigwams. The Inca berries are doing their best to compete with the runner beans. The only issue so far is that the end couple of climbing French beans Cobra have become detached from the support at the top of the frame. This might be a problem if it gets really windy. Of course we haven’t had any weeding to do either. A result!