Sunday 17 March 2024

Indoor Plant Recovery Centre

It’s been another miserable week weatherwise, with more showery rain and dull overcast days. Saturday morning broke the rules with some lovely sunshine but it only lasted until lunchtime. For a few hours, it felt like a different world after what seemed like months of gloomy weather.

At home, a south facing window acts as a plant recovery centre. It’s used mainly to get our tenderest plants through winter but it’s a good place to get cuttings rooted when it’s too cold in the greenhouse. Last year I took some cuttings of a weeping fig and they’ve now grown into some decent-sized plants but along with the weeping fig, a couple of fern plants have appeared. The fern plants gave the impression that they would take over, so I decided to see if I could repot and remove them.


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Sunday 10 March 2024

Land of Gloom

We’re in a spell of what can only be described as perpetual gloom. The cloud level does vary throughout the day from light clouds almost letting sunshine through to heavy clouds with light misty rain. The forecast suggests we might have another week of this to come. After a mild February, March hasn’t got off to a very warm start. It’s good to tell that it’s the start of our gardening season.

Monday 4 March 2024

A mild and wet February

I’m in good company as the Met Office in the UK has said this February is the mildest on record. It’s the mildest I’ve recorded over my fifteen years of record keeping too. This year the average temperature I've recorded at home was 7.4°C (45.3°F) beating the previous record set last year of 6.9°C or 44.4°F. The Met Office has given a figure of 7.5°C for this February. I have to say though a quick check online of the Central England Temperature Record suggests February 1779 was 7.9°C so maybe this February isn't the warmest ever.

Sunday 25 February 2024

Swapping Rain for Frost

The start of the weekend produced our first dry day for 14 days. We’ve had some amount of rainfall each day from the 8th to the 23rd of the month.


The problem hasn’t been due to excessive amounts of rain. Lots of the rainfall we’ve had has been as showers. It’s more the fact that the rainfall that has fallen hasn’t had time to dry up. I’m sure some areas will have had larger amounts of rainfall than us.

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Sunday 18 February 2024

To sow or not to sow – Is it too early?

It’s that time of the year when social media posts are full of “should I start sowing some seeds or is it too early?” There’ll be pictures of long leggy seedlings and people asking what to do with them. Of course, the answer is far from simple and depends on where you live in the country. The trick is knowing the dates of the last frosts where you live. Once you have managed to germinate your seeds where will you be able to grow them until the danger of frost is finished?


Sunday 11 February 2024

I'm back with some weather stuff

I've been busy making gardening videos and have rather neglected writing any blog posts about the weather.

So how did 2023 finish up for us? Well in general 2023 is supposed to have been the hottest, warmest year ever but in our little neck of the woods that wasn't the case. 2023 wasn't even the runner-up, that place went to  2014 with 2022 holding on to the number one spot and 2023 coming third equal with 2011.

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Tuesday 4 July 2023

Gorgeous June – Poor start to July

The weather in June was gorgeous for taking Ruby on long walks at Temple Newsam, Rothwell Park and Nostell Priory. A few days were particularly warm and we decided on evening walks for Ruby once the heat of the day had died down. Indeed this June turned out to be the warmest since I started keeping records in 2010.

Tuesday 20 June 2023

An end to our record dry spell

We’ve just gone 34 days without a single drop of rain. The last time it rained was in May on the 14th of the month. Not that it was a great deal of rain just a meagre 0.4mm hardly detectable in the table below.  The remaining 17 days of May were totally rain free. I’ve included the rainfall and temperature records for May 2023 and June 2023 below.