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Sunday 21 October 2012

Did I Hear Indian Summer Mentioned?

I’m sure I heard mention of an Indian Summer on the TV weather forecast last week. Well I suppose they got the month correct but other than that not much sign of it arriving yet.

Sunday started out sunny but by midday the mist came in and remained all day. It remained cool all day with the temperature only reaching a maximum of 10.6°C certainly nothing “Indian Summer” about that.

Whilst sorting out some records I noticed that the mean temperatures for 2012 are already lower than last year and they’re only going to go lower during November and December. For the records here are the numbers.

The gloomy weather hasn’t stopped this Kaffir Lily from putting on a display in our puddle pond.

Monday 22 October 2012

Frost On the Way?

It really did feel like late October on Monday with damp, drizzly and cloudy conditions all day without the briefest hint of any sunshine. It does look like things are going to change by the weekend with much colder clearer weather spreading from the north.

This is one scenario for early Friday night as the cold weather sinks south from Scotland. Of course the timing is bound to change before the weekend. It might be a case of our first keen frost of winter so any plants needing protection will have to moved into the greenhouse. Our tubs of osteospermums will need to be given some protection as we are experimenting to see if we can over winter the plants in the greenhouse. This way we hope to get them into flower earlier next year. Our potted hydrangea will also be moved into the protection of the cold greenhouse.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

New for Old

The gloom continued on Tuesday. I suppose the only good point is that it’s not been too cold with the temperature varying by only 1.8°C through the day with a maximum of 12.7°C.

Our yellow rose is still producing new buds despite being rather neglected. It had a bad start to the year when it was hacked back to ground level and its roots partially encased in the concrete foundations to the new summerhouse. Its gone on to regrow and is now better than it has ever been producing lots of flowers all summer.

Even though an old mouldy flower has been left on (too wet to dead-head) it’s still producing new flower buds even in this damp and miserable weather.

Wednesday & Thursday 24/25 October 2012

The Gloom Goes On

The miserable gloomy weather has persisted through Wednesday and Thursday again without any hint of brightness. Thursday has been a little brighter and the sunshine or rather brightness chart below shows the only reason I’m reporting this.

As you can see Thursday has been marginally brighter but compared with the rest of the month it could be so much better.

We made the effort to protect the roots of our potted outdoor fruit trees and moved our osteospermums and hydrangea into the cold greenhouse in readiness for a cold spell due to arrive on Friday night. We had five small figs on our Brown Turkey plant in the greenhouse. They don’t seem to have grown much all summer but they looked a little purplish on the outside and felt a bit soft so I decided to pick them and see how they tasted. All five weighed in at just 75 gms.

Friday 26 October 2012

Brighter and Colder

At last the gloomy weather came to an end on Friday and at times we saw some rather pale wintry sun. It’s the first time in four days that the cloud has lifted enough to allow some sunshine to break through. The penalty was much cooler weather with the temperature remaining in single figures despite the sunshine.

In the afternoon I took our part-time dog (she’s a dog all of the time just part-time with us) for a walk in the park at Rothwell. At times the wind was bitter but some of the trees in the pale sunlight looked spectacular in their autumn colours.

We’ve eaten the Brown Turkey figs picked yesterday. They were  a little too small to be able to sample the taste properly. They certainly looked like miniature figs when prepared, I’m not sure what else I expected them to look like. They appeared quite delicate once cut in half to reveal the lovely colour inside.

Our fig tree already has its next crop of smallish figs but I’m not too sure that we’ll be able to get them through the winter in our cold greenhouse. Some layers of fleece might do the trick if we’re lucky and the winter turns out to be fairly mild.

Saturday 27 October 2012

Cold and Frosty

We had a day out to Carlisle by train on Saturday travelling north along the East Coast Main Line to Durham before turning and heading west to Carlisle.

The train was a special charter train hauled to York by diesel. For the remainder of the journey it was steam hauled by 60009 Union of South Africa.

Both locomotives are pictured at Carlisle station where the weather was bright and sunny but cold. As we sped north, I just managed a few pictures, taken through the train windows, of the flooded fields and snowy conditions  It was a bit of a task to keep the window clear of condensation and there was plenty of steam and smoke from our locomotive.

Sunday and Monday 28/29 October 2012

Gloom Returns

Saturday’s bright, sunny and cold weather didn’t last long, just a cold snap as forecast. We returned to gloom and damp again on Sunday and Monday.

On Saturday my blog and weather station reached their third birthdays. Doesn’t time fly by!

The Met Office have released their 3 monthly forecast for the winter period. It’s really just a set of probabilities released for contingency planning. I read it to be suggesting the winter months might be slightly colder than average. If your interested click here for the link to the Met Office forecast.

Whilst the forecast might not be of too much use to gardeners there are some easy to follow charts showing weather patterns for temperature and rainfall for November and also for the 3 winter months. It shows just how much variation there is across the UK and from year to year.

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Into Winter Mode

Tuesday was another gloomy day in what seems like an endless stream of cold gloomy days. The weather has put allotment activities on hold. I’ve rather unknowingly slipped into winter mode where visits to the plot are only made to see what’s available for harvesting.

Surprisingly we’ve still got some tomatoes in the greenhouse. Some look a little worse for the cold night time temperatures but most still look good enough to use without having to convert them into a tomato sauce.

Still to be harvested from our home greenhouse is this year’s sweet pepper crop. It’s not been a good year for us and our entire crop is pictured below. One half decent size pepper and one not quite knowing whether to turn red or not.

Must check up to see if we still had tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse at the end of October last year.

Wednesday 31 October 2012

Could Have Guessed

Wednesday finished off October and just like the majority of days this month it was cool and cloudy with some rain in the evening.

For us October hasn’t been particularly wet with rainfall for the month around 75% of that expected but we may well be the exception with many other locations receiving well above their average monthly rainfall. The main feature has been the cool temperatures throughout the month with the final average of 8.9°C making it the coldest October since 1992. We’ve also had a distinct lack of sunshine with less sunshine than the previous two Octobers. The same can be said for June through to September.

This summer’s certainly been a major disappointment. After that brilliant start in March and a sunny May thoughts were of a great growing year but in the end it turned out to be a difficult and challenging season.