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A Gardener’s Weather Diary - October week 3
Saturday, 15 October 2011
We’ve got soil back
On Saturday two things made a very welcome return. Firstly the sun shone all day after a week hidden behind clouds and after a chilly start it warmed up quite nicely in the afternoon sunshine.
Secondly we have soil back at the allotment. After our dry spring and summer our soil was more like dusty concrete than soil. Now after last week’s rain it suddenly breaks up into a dark tilth when dug. Even the grass paths have a spongy feel to them now they’ve received some rain.
At last it was possible to dig over beds as we cleared our summer crops off them. We managed to plant our remaining garlic cloves in the plot and plant some peas (Meteor) to see if we have any success at over wintering them to achieve an extra early crop next year. They can’t really do much worse then some of our summer crops which failed to produce any peas at all.
In the flower bed adjacent to our shed we’ve planted some wallflowers to give some colour and perfume in spring time next year. Details of all our October plantings can be found on our web site by clicking here.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Cooler nights
The last few nights have been pretty chilly, a reminder that it’s the middle of October, and those warm un -seasonal days at the start of the month are now just a memory. To give our fig a fighting chance this winter as it’s just started to come into leaf we’ve moved it into the greenhouse for some extra protection. Our fig tree has had a most peculiar growing year, a full description of its struggles can be found under “dead or alive”.
The last few cooler days look to have put an end to our record warm October and the daily averages temperatures are now below the record breaking levels of 2001.
Monday, 17 October 2011
A mixed bag
Monday was a day of all sorts. We had some brief glimpses of sunshine amongst the cloudy spells and then in the early evening a strong wind picked up and we had a little rain.
The amount of rainfall was only 2.0mm so after a rather wet start we are now below average for the month yet again. With the sudden drop in temperature, strong gusty wind and rain it was a pretty unpleasant evening.