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Friday 21 & Saturday, 22 October 2011
Not bad for late October
Both Friday and Saturday were pretty good days for late October and in the afternoon sunshine it felt mild.
It was good weather for tidying up on the plot. The last of the runner beans and some old dry broad bean plants were cleared to the compost heap and the weeds dug out to make the bed ready for digging over for winter. Despite the lack of rain all summer the rain in early October has left the ground in excellent condition for digging.
I’ve put Friday and Saturday together not for any weather related facts but because my computer is playing silly games with me. At times it works perfectly fine, then suddenly decides enough is enough and just stops or rather slows to an absolute snail’s pace where every click of the mouse takes what seems like minutes to be performed. I do mean every click, choosing to vary the percentage view of a window will demand a long wait for the little box to open with the choice of screen sizes to click on. Re-boots don’t seem to sort the problem out and as yet I haven’t manage to fathom out the operation that causes the sudden slow down. Computers are so good when they’re working - so frustrating when they’re not.
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Late calabrese is a treat
Sunday’s temperature got up to an impressive 16.6°C, good for late October. We didn’t have much sunshine, but with a fairly light breeze it felt pleasantly mild.
I decided to try some of our late calabrese (Green Magic). It’s been tempting me for a few weeks now but I've resisted thinking the heads could do to grow a bit bigger.
Growth seems very slow at this time of year. I’ve wondered if I should have planted the seeds a little earlier to perhaps get rather larger heads or has our really dry late summer and autumn slowed down progress.
The seeds were sown on the 2nd July and planted out on the 9th August.
The seed packet recommends sowing May to June, so I was fractionally late sowing the seed, and that it should be ready to harvest 75-80 days after planting. Does this mean after sowing the seeds or transplanting the seedlings? I assume it means sowing the seed in which case our calabrese should have been ready for picking by 20 th September. If it does refer to a transplanting date then our calabrese is ready according to the 75 to 80 days stated on the seed packet.
This was our calabrese at the beginning of October. It looks to me to be a little short of water and looking rather blue at this stage. The early October rains did wonders.
As for the information on the seed packet I’m not too fussed either way as the calabrese tasted good and we’ve some more heads to look forward to. Perhaps next year I might sow the seeds a couple of weeks earlier towards the end of June.
Monday, 24 October 2011
Have we any swedes?
Monday produced another nice day for us for late October although there are news reports that other parts of the UK are receiving lots of rain and flood warnings are in place. At the moment October for us is heading to be yet another month with below average rainfall.
On the plot the other day I was checking out our swedes (Marian). These were sown towards the end of July which I’m beginning to think might just have been a little late. The plants have grown well enough and the tops look really healthy but there doesn’t seem to be any sign of a root to harvest.
Just like our calabrese discussed yesterday it might be the dry weather that’s slowed the plants growth down in August and September but I think next year I’ll sow the seeds at the beginning of July rather than towards the end of the month.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Just a little rain
Tuesday was another nice day for the time of year with some short sunny spells throughout the day. We had some over night rain adding 4.8mm to our total for the month. Temperatures were around normal for late October and the winds were just a light breeze.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Embarrassing or what!
Wednesday dawned cool and clear giving us a pretty good day with some sunny spells.
My new sheet of cut to size acrylic arrived so, whilst the weather was dry and most importantly not windy, it seemed like a good opportunity to get it fitted. Due to the close proximity of a fence, the roof glazing cannot slide out in the same way as it went in before the fence was built by our neighbour. The only option was to break the glass still remaining in place to remove it. Strange how difficult it can be to break glass with a hammer when you want to. In the end I managed to remove it all and carefully clear away all the broken shards. The size of the acrylic sheet is 1.65m x 0.73m, well that’s what I measured, so I was hoping the new sheet would fit satisfactorily. It was pretty difficult to slide the new sheet into place as the acrylic flexed in the middle and kept falling out of the locating grooves in the wooden frame. I eventually managed to fit it into the desired grooves with the help of some temporary wooden stiffeners to stop it flexing. Permanent stiffeners are required to stop the sheet flexing and falling out when the wind blows or it’s weighed down by snowfall.
But now the new sheet is installed it’s embarrassing to see just how dirty the old glass has become. I’ll have to do some cleaning in time for next year’s seed sowing.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Pear surprise
I expected Thursday to be a really wet day to help balance up the exceptionally dry last six months or so but it didn’t happen -yet again. It was dull and cloudy all day with some spells of light rain on and off all day which in the end only amounted to 4.0mm.
One bonus from replacing the broken greenhouse window yesterday was that I managed to reach some pears still hanging on the tree. Whilst some were definitely beyond hope having been devastated by wasps and birds these four looked as though they had some edible fruit left. At least they wont be able fall off the tree and break another pane of glass when it’s next windy.
Friday, 28 October 2011
More sunshine
Another nice day today with plenty of sunshine and temperatures about average for the end of October.
Watching Autumn Watch on Friday night the weather report covered just how warm October has been and quoted something like the 7th warmest in 100 years. I’m not convinced that our October has been that good. Certainly it started off with record breaking temperatures during the first 3 days of the month but since then the temperatures have been around or below expected. My graph of our monthly average temperature shows how we’ve gone from the record breaking start to just above expected towards the end of the month.
My figures for our greenhouse show that we’ve had colder greenhouse temperatures this year than last.
In this chart it’s possible to compare the number of hours below 7.0°C in my greenhouse up to 28th October 2011 and for last October. Already we’ve had 84 hours this year compared to 61 hours for the whole of October 2010.
It’s been a crazy year so far with our record temperatures for the beginning of October and our ongoing below average rainfall for most of the year. I wonder what surprises November and December have up their sleeves for us.
