Tuesday, 15 May 2012

May Gobs


 For May the weather has been awful. Rain and now wind, hail and more rain. Mind you May was windy last year.  In fact bad weather in May is a tradition. In the north of Scotland they have a name for the May bad weather. It's known as the "May Gobs". I think it is a very descriptive term!

I had high hopes for my strawberries as they were flowering already. Here's a tell tale snap. Those black centres mean these flowers will die rather than bear fruit.
Ox Eyed Strawberries
 Here's what they should look like!
Healthy Strawberry
The high winds blew out my shed window, but a neighbour has had a worse experience

Oh oh


And just in case you think I made that term up here is a recent newspaper headline from that part of the world:


Something else happening in our neighbourhood. The swan has been nesting for weeks now. The heron is storking the swan and in this video a cat is stalking the heron. Hope it works as a bit of an experiment . Apologies for the poor quality. (The dog lost patience and dragged me off at the end)


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7 comments:

  1. allotments4you16 May 2012 at 06:46

    I never new that about strawberry plants...now I feel the need to go and check my flowers!!!

    The video worked...I( never spotted the swan though??

    Hope the nasty weather passes and summer arrives for us very soon.

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  2. Martyn16 May 2012 at 09:27

    Well this year the May "Gobs" have turned up further south too! We've a mixture now of frosted and unfrosted strawberry flowers.

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  3. Sue Garrett16 May 2012 at 10:06

    Even our alpine strawberries have been spoiled by the frost.

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  4. Zzev16 May 2012 at 19:47

    We just had some hail for two days in a row, but no frost.

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  5. Lady Fe16 May 2012 at 20:13

    I used to work at a strawberry farm and one of our jobs was to take off the first flowers. The theory is that the plant thinks it hasn't finished it's job and grows another flower. The theory may not be right, but all the farms did it, and they still exported loads. If your flowers have "dead bits" in the middle already, it won't hurt to just take the flowers off now and see if it works for you? If it doesn't work, at least you tried ;-)

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  6. Kelli17 May 2012 at 19:46

    Sounds as if more cold weather is on its way! Makes it tough to grow.

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  7. Mal's Allotment17 May 2012 at 22:14

    Tany - There will be more about swans soon!

    Martyn. Is it that jetstream wavering further south?

    Sue - Alpines shouls surely know better than to flower this early.

    Mr F. Despite -2 predictions my Max/Min thermometer reports 1 degree C as the lowest temperature recently - although that behind plastic and missed the hailstorms as a result. Just now we have 7 to 8 degrees both day and night!

    Lady F - That's encouraging, thanks. I had already removed the "deadheads" and recalled advice to remove all the flower heads in the first year to encourage vigorous growth. However I have 5 patches with different varieties and I had hoped one of them would be really early (Honeoye is my earliest variety).

    Kelli - Something will be thriving - potatoes?

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