Saturday 29 April 2017

Bloody weather

So, a couple of weeks back we had summer-like weather - 20+ temperatures, sunny, then... British weather hits. Last weekend the forecast said this:

Any fruit currently flowering and potatoes may be killed off completely by a hard frost - we didn't have any fleece to cover the apples or strawberries with but did make a cover for the potatoes with some fine net we had planned to use as a windbreak:



Most important question - did this work? On Thursday went up to uncover the spuds and essentially looks about 90% successful:


Leaves at the very edge got frosted but by and large things survived (or looked like they did - time will tell) - the situation with the apple is less good:


Badly frosted flowers but the buds look possibly OK, so we may yet get some fruit, but a long shot. Also the strawberries suffered in the same way but they flower for a long time, so we should still be OK there. We may also have lost our entire blackcurrant crop...

Lessons:

  • Covering things is a good idea
  • Should put in potatoes later next year 
  • If growing apples, later flowering ones are good (we have an early one)

Will come back to this later in the summer to work out the final impact of a couple of cold days...

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