Kitchen Garden Forum

Down the other end of the village where my Mum lives, got hit by a mini tornado at 11 o'clock this morning.
I went down in my lunch hour to clear some of the big branches up, and couldn't believe how many big trees it had ripped the tops out of.
It really did look like a bomb had gone off.
Home farm, where i also work had two sycamores blown to bits and the large garden has branches from one end of the garden to the other, so i'm expecting a phone call anytime.

Also while i was down there, i caught three roughnecks about to steal all my Mums pickles, jams and marmalades off her little stall.
They did put the stuff back, so not a lot i can do police wise for her, but have got their number so reported it anyway.

So all in all, quite an eventful lunch hour.

I do hope you didn't discover a lot more damage, OH, and the three miscreants also got their just desserts!

It's been exceedingly windy here for the last two days (although no tornado!), the road into Skipton looked like autumn, all covered in leaves which had been blown off the trees. We are hoping to do some work on the allotment tomorrow (daren't imagine what the poor battered broadbeans will look like!), but the forecast isn't much better.

Well,OH,seems that your firewood problems are solved for the Winter if you have a wood-burning stove.

Wind's dangerous wherever it is as my b-i-l used to say.
I wonder why I bother sometimes. Built a windbreak fence round my veg garden last year, metre of boards topped by a metre of windbreak netting, surrounded my 10' square patch of early greens with 2-1/2' high netting and still 1/4 of them have been blown out of the ground. Why do Victorian walled gardens of an acre or more work?

Dear Geoff,
the reason why walled gardens work is because if you looked beyond the walls there is usually lots of trees forming the windbreak proper. The walls on many of these gardens did not go all the way round. They were put up to grow fruit against to start with. Walls act as storage heaters and some early ones (before they invented greenhouses) were hollow and had fires lit inside them to help keep the cold away. There are two books you could try to get hold of to read. The victorian kitchen garden and charlston kedding which is a history of kitchen gardens.
Regards Sally Wright.

Dear OH

Sorry to hear about the Milton Bryan weather. We have had some blustery spells here, but nothing out of the ordinary, despite forecast gales. I just hope that where it has been bad everyone's fruit has survived - it was such a promising start, more blossom than I ever remember.

Thank-you all for your thoughts, off down the village later to start clearing for proper.