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Monday 06 August 2012 to Friday 10 August 2012
Summer’s Here
At last we’ve had a few decent days of summer weather with the temperatures into the twenties and no rain. The nights have been a little on the cool side and the mornings have had a bit of an autumnal feel to them.
We spent a few days away in Cumbria staying in Dufton a pretty little village close to Appleby.
We made the short a short journey from Brow Farm, our comfortable Bed & Breakfast accommodation, to the National Trust property Acorn Bank to look around the gardens. The gardens were looking very pretty, probably helped by the wet weather this summer.
There’s also a large walled herb garden and orchard to visit and a pleasant walk through the trees, alongside Crowdundle Beck to visit the watermill which is currently undergoing restoration.
Back home it’s now time to get the rest of this year’s potatoes lifted and stored safely in the garage for use throughout the winter.
Saturday 11 August 2012
Wow - A Ripening Tomato
Saturday was much cloudier than the last few days but still pleasantly warm.
It was a return to the allotment after our few days away in Cumbria. Our plum crop this year is a complete failure although the tree does have around a dozen plums which I’ve been keeping my eyes on for any of the fruits to ripen. As soon as the fruits begin to turn the wasps are into them and with so little on the tree I didn’t want this to happen. In the middle of the afternoon as we made some coffee I checked and decided one plum was ready for the taste test.
This Oullins gage was delicious. It didn’t make it to the weigh in as we ate it straight from the tree. Why can’t the supermarkets sell fruit this tasty?
As we were drinking our coffee I noticed something strange in the greenhouse. It looked like a glint of something reddish. I looked a little closer and sure enough we have a couple of Gardener’s Delight tomatoes actually turning red.
The first of our autumn raspberries are now ripening as the summer fruiting ones come to the end of their season. We have both red and yellow varieties.
The change hasn’t affected the blackbirds though as they’ve moved seamlessly from eating summer to autumn fruiting berries. Red or yellow they don’t seem too fussed.
Sunday 12 - Tuesday 14 August 2012
August’s Hottest Day So Far
The weather over the last few days had turned a little disappointing after last weeks warm and sunny days. We’ve had dwindling amounts of sunshine and a dropping off of temperatures but Wednesday changed that, as after a bit of cloud first thing in the morning the cloud disappeared leaving a sunny and hot afternoon producing the hottest day of the month with the temperature reaching 25.7°C.
We did make a plot visit in the afternoon but unusually for this year it was a little too hot for doing anything too strenuous so we settled for planting some lettuces, doing a little bit of harvesting and lifting the first of this year’s shallots.
We planted a variety of lettuces using up some off-cuts of weed suppressant membrane to once again try to cut down on the amount of weeding needed.
Over the few dry, warm and sunny days these Picasso shallots have dried off well and have been lifted to clean up and store over winter.