Time seems to galloping by and still lots to do getting the kitchen garden ready for the 2025 growing season. Some little jobs like making plant labels from margarine tubs ...
Photo 1: Homemade Plant Labels
to clearing out the polytunnel ...
Photo 2: Polytunnel before Clearing Out
As usual in the garden, jobs need to be done in a certain order because you can't do A before you've done B. One of the first things to sort out was the compost bins. During the 2024 Black Friday event, I treated myself to a new HotBin composter ...
Photo 3: HotBin Waiting to be Unpacked
Mary had made a few noises about how she would like to use the summerhouse for its intended purpose. So on 10th March I unpacked the HotBin and its base unit ...
Photo 4: HotBin Base Unit
Photo 5: HotBin on its Base Unit
The HotBin comes with an instruction manual (including composting tips) and a few accessories: a rake for removing finished compost, a hot water bottle, straps for securing the hatch and a short (10 cm) probe thermometer for checking compost temperatures. There is a built-in thermometer in the HotBin lid - useful as a qualitative indicator that the Hotbin is working but not a quantitative measure of the compost temperature. I use 50 cm, 30 cm and 10 cm probe thermometers to accurately monitor compost temperatures at various depths.
Photo 6: HotBin Accessories
I installed the new HotBin next to my antique Hotbin (about 10 years old) and started to fill it immediately:
Photo 7: New and Old Hotbin
Unfortunately, a series of cold nights, too much hard-to-compost woody garden waste and a lack of easily-compostible 'green' waste meant the Hotbin never took off thermally. The top 10-20 cm achieved temperatures between 50 ℃ and 55 ℃ while the 20-40 cm depths hovered around 40 ℃ to 45 ℃. At compost depths below 40 cm, temperatures were only 25 ℃ to 35 ℃. At the beginning of April, I decided to stop adding fresh waste and restart the hot composting process again. I emptied one of my Supercomposter Bins which had been storing composted material from my old HotBin prior to tansferring to one of my maturation bins ...
Photo 8: Supercomposter Bin
... and refilled it with the partially composted waste from the new HotBin. In order to empty the Supercomposter bin, I had to first empty one of my maturation bins (Photo 9) where the final 'polishing' stage of the composting process takes place (typically a further six months storage before use in the garden).
Photo 9: Three of My Four Maturation Bins
Compost from the maturation bins is either sieved (for use in potting compost media or when a aesthetically pleasing mulch is required) or used direct as a mulch. The former was not an option as time was limited. Consequently, the compost (soil improver) was spread on the asparagus patch (Photo 10) ...
Photo 10: Asparagus Patch Mulched with Soil Improver
... the apple and plum tree orchard (Photo 11) ...
Photo 11: Apple & Plum Trees (with raspberries)
... and the main raspberry bed (Photo 12) ...
Photo 12: Main Raspberry Plot
Finally, the contents of the Supercomposter could be transferred to the empty maturation bin so that the partially composted material from the new HotBin could be moved to the now empty Supercomposter. The old Hotbin (Photo 7) had run continuously for over a year (372 days to be precise) and was also due to be emptied. Fortunately there was still some room in the recently emptied maturation bin.
Photo 13: Emptied (Old) HotBin
The old Hotbin was cleaned using a hosepipe with the waste water allowed to soak into one of the vegetable beds. You can see from Photo 14 that the base plate, which sits in the bottom of the HotBin to provide drainage and aeration, has seen better days.
The (old) HotBin is back up and running at 60+ ℃ and being 'fed' a diet of partially-composted waste from the (new) HotBin along with freshly-mown grass and kitchen waste.
Video 1: Steaming & Hot (Compost Bin)
Meanwhile, my second Supercomposter (Photo 16) has been emptied (it used to contain shredded garden waste) in preparation for its move to a position next to the (new) HotBin ...
Photo 16: Emptied Supercomposter Ready for the Move
... where it will be repurposed as an intermediate store between the HotBins and the maturation bins. The space created by relocating this Supercomposter will be taken my my new strawberry wall garden. More on that at a later date.
Still lots more to do but we are getting there ...
September - As the name suggests, it was the seventh month of the Roman calendar when there were only ten months in a year. It retained its name after January and February were added to bring the annual complement up to twelve months.
All of the daily photographs for September 2024 feature the gazebo in the foreground; this photo is from the 24th day of the month (Photo 1). The overall impression is of a green foliage with the first signs of autumn starting to appear.
Photo 1: The Rear Garden on 24th Sept 2024
All the daily photos for September can be seen in the short video below ...
Video 1: Daily Photos of the Rear Garden - September 2024
What does a Scottish soft rock band have in common with September 2024? They were both Wet Wet Wet! A distinct lack of sunshine but generally warm. Weather stats for our Hereford garden are summarised in the Table below:
There were one or two hot days at the beginning of the month before settling down to pleasantly warm. Apart from the middle and end of the month, night temperatures held up well.
Figure 1: Min/Max Daily Temperatures for September 2024
High pressure over England in the middle of September gave rise to the only period of dry weather in September. The start and end of the month were wet with particularly heavy rain in the final third resulting in heavy floods in the Midlands.
Figure 2: Rainfall & Sunshine for September 2024
With five or so years of data for Hereford from our Davis Weather Station, it is interesting to look for patterns in the weather data. All three temperature measures (mean, maximum and minimum) alternate between warm and hot (Figure 3). Should we expect September this year (2025) to be hot? Insufficient data to be making those sorts of predictions!!
Figure 3: Temperature Data for September (2020 - 2024)
Figure 4 summarises the rainfall, sunshine and to wind speeds for the past five Septembers (2020 - 2024). The unusually high rainfall in 2024 is certainly put into context. Worryingly, there seems to be a downward trend in sunshine hours - not good for grape ripening, electricity generation from our solar PV array, or late summer holidays.
Figure 4: Rain, Wind & Sunshine Trends for September (2020 - 2024)
The next three figures are taken from the UK Met Office's monthly report for September 2024. In agreement with the weather data provided by my backyard Davis Weather Station, we can confirm that September in Herefordshire was average (temperature, Figure 5), excessive (rainfall, Figure 6) and dismal (sunshine, Figure 7),
Figure 5: UK Mean Temperature Anomalies for September 2024
Figure 6: UK Rainfall (relative) for September 2024
Figure 7: UK Sunshine Hours (relative) for September 2024
Climate change has brought forward the blossom-time of our fruit trees. Plum, cherry and pear appear first followed later by the apple blossom. It is a somewhat nervous time for the fruit grower because a late frost can severely reduce (or eliminate) your crop.
Flowers have opened on the Concorde Pear Tree ...
Photo 1: Concorde Pear Flowers
Photo 2: Concorde Pear Espalier Tree (31st March 2025)
The first flowers to open are on the left hand side of the tree (as you look at it) which receives the sunn a little earlier.
Unfortunately, my Doyenne du Comice pear tree has finally given up the ghost after a number of under performing years (Photo 3). It is doubly unfortunate because it was the pollination partner of the Concorde pear tree. Although the Concorde is self-fertile, the fruit quality and yield is better with a co-pollinator.
Photo 3: Comice Pear Tree (deceased, RIP)
The three plum trees (Cox's Emperor, Jubilee and Groves Late Victoria) were planted in 2018. Flowers appeared for the first time last year, largely down to my incorrect pruning technique. After summer pruning in 2023, flowers did finally appear in 2024, albeit not in great numbers and there was no fruit. The number of flowers has increased ten-fold and all three trees have flowered. Fingers crossed that I will get to taste at least one fruit this year!
Photo 3: Plum Tree Blossom
Our small cherry tree (Stella) is also in blossom. In a good year we get a kilogram of cherries provided we get to the fruits before the birds do (yes, I am looking at you blackbirds!). The tree was planted in a root bag to restrict its growth - I always wonder how productive it would have been if we had not restricted it.
Photo 4: Stella Cherry (3rd April 2025)
The apple blossom will appear later in the month. At the moment the flower buds are tight and a week or two from opening ...
Photo 5: Golden Delicious Apple Buds (3rd April 2025)
It will soon be time to start enjoying our home-grown asparagus. The first spear of 2025 appeared on the 30th March ...
Photo 1: Early Start to the Asparagus Season 2025 (photo taken March 31st)
This is the second earliest appearance of the first spear coming just five days later than last year's (2024) record. The table below collates the 'date of first appearance' for the last six years.
Year
Date of First Spear (Day of the Year)
2020
2nd April (93)
2021
31st March (90)
2022
14th April (114)
2023
10th April (110)
2024
25th March (85)
2025
30th March (89)
In a previous post, I looked at a couple of weather parameters (Jan - Mar average temperatures and solar radiation) but could not find an obvious relationship with the first appearance date of an asparagus spear. A plot of total solar radiation in March against the day of the year when the first spear appeared is shown in Figure 1. Solar radiation can be used as a proxy for sunshine hours.
Figure 1: Relationship between Sunshine Hours and the First Appearance Date
Based on all six data points, there may be a weak correlation (R² = 0.25) between Solar Radiation and the first appearance of an asparagus spear. While correlation does not mean causation, I offer a possible explanation of the relationship in Figure 1. Higher solar radiation increases soil temperature and encourages early emergence of the asparagus. In support of my hypothesis, the correlation is much stronger (R² = 0.68) if we ignore the 2024 result. What was special about 2024? Apart from being the warmest year globally, you mean! Well the winter of 2023/2024 was the second warmest on record for England and Wales while Spring 2024 was the warmest on record (in part because May 2024 was very warm). With all that extra atmospheric heat around, soil temperatures would be much higher than normal and the beneficial influence of lots of sunshine would be less important.
Of course, it might be more complicated than that ...
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