Cold!

[alan refail]

Minus 2 forecast - minus 6 recorded in polytunnel at 9.00 this morning. And that, as I always say, just a mile from the sea. What's it like inland, I wonder?

[Shallot Man]

Very heavy frost last night, GREAT might have killed all those pesky pests.

[pongeroon]

Alan, I can report that inland it is Cold. Don't know how cold, but I wore two fleeces and a woolly hat while running today, unheard of before.

The chickens water was frozen solid, and it is freezing over again now.

Have to go to the tip now, so no doubt car will need thawing too.

I'm quite enjoying it actually. The sunshine is lovely.

[pongeroon]

How cold with you, JB?

[Johnboy]

Minimum overnight temperature here was 18.1 degrees F.
Have just looked again and it is 22.4 F. (11am)
Strangely Hereford 25 miles away were said to get -7C which is just about right. Fancy a forecast which is correct for a change!
Bl---y Cold! Heating on full blast and still B. Cold!
This for sure will kill off many overwintering pests. Lets hope the White Fly get a hammering.
JB.

[pongeroon]

I'm with you on the whitefly thing, JB. We talked about giving up on brassicas for that very reason. I don't think we will though, they are so useful and taste so good.

[peter]

By car external temperature reading Enfield and Tottenham were -4C today circa 07:30.

[glallotments]

I've fingers crossed for devastating whitefly too.

At the moment we have 0.4C with an overnight low of -3.3 C with -4.9 the night before. Yesterday the highest temperature reading was 0C

Spending lots of time thawing the birdbath. I've never seen so many blackbirds in one place at the same time.

My husband bought a weather station this year and has begun a blog about our weather if anyone is interested it's http://ossettweather.blogspot.com/

[Shallot Man]

Manged to visit the Lottie this morning for my last solitary cauliflower, pesky white-fly thriving on it.

[oldherbaceous]

This morning i have been continuing to clear brambles from a rather large garden that i have just recently started working at. It has been totally neglected for years, but it must have been a lovely garden years ago as i'm finding lots of lovely mature shrubs.

I did feel a little chilly to start with, but once the sun got up and i got going it was really most pleasant.

[Monika]

We had minus 8 last night followed by a gorgeously sunny, bright day with crunchy snow underfoot. The pots in the unheated greenhouse, covered up with double thick fleece, had a crust of frost which thawed out in the sunshine. Now it's warmed up, the barometer is falling - more snow expected over night!

[Catherine]

In our back garden it was -7C and when we went into the front garden to thaw the car to leave for work it was -9C on the car thermometer. I hope that we dont have the promised snow Monika mentioned.

We had five blackbirds in our garden for several days and one is particularly agressive about the food. So much so that I have had to make several little piles of seeds so that they can share.

[Geoff]

I'm feeding the birds and giving them fresh water twice a day. There must be Blackbirds everywhere, if somebody could teach our eight or so to take turns I'm sure they'd get more pecking time than the current dancing round after each other. My wife read somewhere that a lot of them are migrants (coming over here eating our food, taking our jobs). At least it has brought the Long Tailed Tits onto the feeders. I think I saw a Snipe today, we had one once before after a cold spell that used to peck at the edge of melting snow as the grass was gradually exposed. I don't think my thermometers are accurate enough to quote, the one in the unheated greenhouse usually reads lower than one outside on a shed but they showed -8 and -7 for last night.

[Geoff]

It posted twice so I've edited this one!

[peter]

Last night I looked out at my workshop shed and thought "hmm the window should not be entirely covered in frost", found that the fan heater motor was not going round, heater was switching on, overheating after a few seconds and then the safety cutoff kicked in, after it cooled down another cycle.

So I ended up disembowelling it, strange three legged swastika style screw heads on the three screws holding the two halves of the casing together, presumably and anti-tamper elf-n-safety measure.

Cleaned off the motor with an old toothbrush and applied one little drop of 3in1 oil to where the shaft sticks out of the top of the motor. Tested ok, so put it all back together.

Seems to be working again, don't want to have frozen squash, onions and shallots.