Disclaimer
This weather site is operated as an amateur weather station site and should not be used as official data. I make every effort to ensure my data is as accurate as possible but I cannot guarantee that the data meets the requirements of the Meteorological Office or other professional weather monitoring organisations.
Wednesday & Thursday 08/09 July 2015
Like a Sweet Shop - What to Pick?
The last couple of days have been a bit mixed. Wednesday was a poor day, cool, with rain on and off although it didn’t amount to much more than a couple of millimetres in all. Thursday was much better with some long sunny spells and dry.
Temperature, Rainfall and Sunshine Records for Wednesday 08 July to Friday 10 July 2015
On the plot the rainfall and milder weather has certainly got things moving. After a lean spell of the last couple of months we’ve now got plenty of crops ready for harvesting. The tricky problem is knowing what to pick first.
This was Thursday afternoon’s haul which should keep us going for a couple of days. Although I’d really like to get our leeks planted it looks like the most important job at the moment is to pick our berry crop before the fruit starts to spoil. The leeks will have to wait their turn.
At home my fleece around the cherry tree seems to have worked so far and has kept our blackbirds from raiding the cherries.
I think our cherries are ready for the taste test now!
Friday 10 July 2015
Lovely Day - Wrong Job
Friday was a lovely hot summer’s day with the temperature reaching 27.9°C (82.2°F) in the afternoon sunshine.
After the hot start to the month the temperature over the last week or so has cooled off and I decided Friday was a good day to carry out a bit of renovation work on a small area of garden around the pond and under our palm tree.
It’s only a small area where in previous years we’ve had a variety of plants growing in containers but with limited success. At its best it has only looked good for a short time in summer and if the plants miss out on watering and dry up they don’t normally recover so well. So we decided it was time to convert this small patch into a little bed of its own and see how we could develop it.
It wasn’t the best of days to be digging out patches of dry, compacted turf and turning over the soil to break up it to a decent depth.
A layer of gravel was added to help with drainage and the bed filled with topsoil. It’s now just about ready for planting up. I feel some more garden centre visits coming on.
Saturday & Sunday 11/12 July 2015
Lots to Harvest - But?
It was a nice summer’s weekend and we spent a couple of afternoons on the plot harvesting. With the change to some warmer weather strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, jostaberries, tayberries and blackcurrants have taken to ripening as you pick. Not that I’m complaining.
The better weather has also started some crops into a spurt of growth. Our outdoor tomatoes have turned from sickly, yellow weak looking specimens into something resembling tomato plants.
This is how they looked three weeks ago but the warmer weather has transformed them into the better looking tomato plants below.
However I do have some concerns regarding the rate of progress of our runner beans and climbing French beans. They don’t seem to be making much of an effort at all.
Last year on the 13 July 2014 our beans looked like this.
This year after a cold June and suffering from marauding slugs they’ve really been set back.
Perhaps a good rain would do them good as no amount of watering from the tap seems to be good enough for them.
Monday & Tuesday 13/14 July 2015
Stella!
A couple of mixed summer days with Tuesday the better of the two days with some sunny spells. Monday was dull and miserable and although it seemed to rain for most of the day the total only amounted to 2.6mm (0.1”) doing nothing more than wetting the top of the soil. A good rain would do wonders for the garden and plot.
Temperature, Rainfall and Sunshine Records for Sunday 12 July to Tuesday 14 July 2015
We’ve had problems with some crops on the plot this year which in most cases we’ve put down to the odd weather this year. However some things are doing really well. Our Onward peas are giving us a really good crop. We had some concerns about how they would manage through the hot spell of weather at the beginning of the month. We gave them a good watering hoping this would see them through and it seems to have worked.
At home our pot grown cherry Stella has given us a decent crop of delicious fruits. My temporary covering of fleece proved to be successful in keeping the blackbirds away and we’ve now picked all the cherries.
It’s now a case of finding the correct way of pruning the potted tree to maximise its cropping potential.
