Autumn bits and bobs

[Geoff]

Rained all day without amounting to much - predicted 25C turned out to be 17.5C max.

[Monika]

I agree with you, Smurfy, I don't like the hot weather, especially not so unseasonally hot (we had 27 degrees maximum here yesterday). Like at Geoff's, it's been dribbling on and off today, but we could do with a good cooling downpour.

It's noticeable that the plants relying on lots of rain, like potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, kohlrabi, have been or are smaller than in other years.

[Parsons Jack]

Another cloudless sky this morning. Just a bit of sea mist around at the moment.

At least there was a breeze yesterday to cool it a little bit

I think over the weekend, the beach car parks were the fullest I have seen them all this year. Shame all the kiosks had already been dismantled and removed for the winter

[peter]

....It's noticeable that the plants relying on lots of rain, like potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, kohlrabi, have been or are smaller than in other years.

Not my potatoes.

One of the best crops I've had, both yield and average size of spud.

[glallotments]

....It's noticeable that the plants relying on lots of rain, like potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, kohlrabi, have been or are smaller than in other years.

Not my potatoes.

One of the best crops I've had, both yield and average size of spud.

Nor ours - our potato tubers are larger than usual and the crop is more or less the same in weight as in previous years. We really have had a dry spring summer - the ground is still bone dry just below the surface. February gave our last decent rainfall. And we haven't watered them.

This is the data from our weather station

[Monika]

GL, how interesting. I am not clever enough to attach a graph, but here my equivalent data :
November 2010 170 mm
December 36 mm
January 2011 84 mm
February 167 mm
March 15 mm
April 14 mm
May 93 mm
June 87 mm
July 77 mm
August 121 mm
September 86 mm

Apparently, we had quite a lot more rain than you, but certainly not the same as most years. Here, too, the soil is still bone dry under any plants and it just "runs" off the spade, because the rain has rarely been heavy, usually just heavy drizzle.

Overall, the harvest has been very good this year and our freezer is literally full to overflowing (peas, broad beans, French beans, runner beans, broccoli, cooked red cabbage etc), so we are not complaining, just commenting!

[glallotments]

Monika: For us it was the peas and sweet corn harvests that were disasters.

If you watch Look North you may have seen that Paul Hudson reckoned that here in Yorkshire we have had average rainfall this year. Obviously the met weather stations are in wetter places than where we are. We sent him the link to a site called Weather Underground http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IWAKEFIE3 where all the data from our weather station uploads every 15 minutes and he was really surprised at our data but from what I hear from others in Yorkshire we are by no means exceptional in our lack of rain.

[peter]

Wedding Anniversary that is.

Don't time fly.

[Clive.]

Today I have been getting our display set up for Apple Day...photos attached.

47 varieties from the gardens with info' displayed, although Beauty of Bath appears by photo due to it being a very early eater.
Saturn is by photo too as it is a new addition and had one Apple on that seemed to be consumed by something/someone.
+ 2 more varieties if you count the Crab Apples.

Clive.

[Clive.]

407 visitors today to Apple day...and a surprise visit from the Chair- of the Northern Fruit Group..who I suspect must have read about it in KG. ..and has gone home with 3 of the mystery Pears that I posted about recently to try to find the definitive answer. Also 3 of another unknown Pear and 5 Bess Pool Apples set to appear at a Northern Apple day soon...

Volunteer Trevor was nicely busy with his Apple identification and our group of working holiday volunteers were helping out too...including in the group a deputy editor of The Grocer magazine who was in his element retailing Apples.

My mum visited too thanks to a lift with a friend of mine from back in junior school days.

..and then the BBC arrived....so I had a camera pointed at me again.

Tomorrow is gravel rake the muddied paths...

Clive.

[Geoff]

Good luck with the Northern Fruit Group. We were given an unnamed Apple tree and took fruit to the NFG people at an Apple day at Harlow Carr, they were unsure and asked us for information about blossom and habit. The next year we took more fruit and photographs of the tree in blossom and close ups of the flowers. They took it all away and then wrote back to us identifying it as Laxton's Epicure. Great group of people, and a lovely Apple that we are enjoying at the moment.

[oldherbaceous]

A lovely couple of posts Clive, it sounds if a lot of effort was rewarded well, congratulations.

[Nature's Babe]

Hello OH and Clive, that apple display looks great, I keep looking for a cherry cox, but don't see that variety anywhere round here. I tried one when we lived in Edenbridge, it was delicious. I have managed to find a muscat grape, when I have more time I will try drying the surplus, muscat raisins are delicious. We have been very fortunate, rain at night and sunshine yesterdaytoday, still dark at the moment, hoping for yet another fine day.

[Clive.]

Mighty windy here this morning...so good job we don't have any gazebos to deal with today.

We don't have Epicure at work but do have Superb and Fortune however there is an Epicure in the line of cordons at home here.

One of our mystery Pears, not the one I posted on here, has initially been suggested to be Le Lectair. I had not heard of it before.
Having had a look at some photos and descriptions it does look a distinct possibility and is one that failed another ident attempt 20+ years ago.

At the end of the day Trevor collected one of most of the examples on show to augment his display for his next outing to Woolsthorpe Manor for 15/16th.

Our display may well get another run as with it being housed indoors this year it seems sensible to leave it in situ for at least this Wednesdays regular open day....but need to talk that one out today.

Clive.

[oldherbaceous]

Well, we have got to that time of year again, when there isn't enough daylight hours to get all my little jobs done in a day.

I wonder if the Winter will go as quickly as this year seems to have done!