No End in Sight For This Cold Snap!!

Looks like some warm colours on the temperature chart a week today (Fri 12th), but what about after that? Use the 'slider' under the dates:

http://www.weatherbadger.com/viewer.php?area=uk&wxcht=exp_temp

EDIT: Those warm colours don't appear any more - looks like Spring has been delayed again!

 

Hi Scrungee,
can't wait for a week's time let's hope it stays yellow and then goes to gold , to red ...

 

Caught sight of some newspaper article shown on TV this morning (whilst half asleep) suggesting it will be two weeks until warmer weather arrives and then it will be wet.

Another gloomy newspaper article (and it's spuds as well as wheat) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...cold-weather-crisis-hits-farmers-8562648.html

There's fields near my plot that haven't even been ploughed yet.

 

There was a farmer around here on local TV that said he still had acres of spuds in the ground from last year, apparently it was too wet to lift them last autumn, and now its too cold, not sure what that meant as I was only half listening.
But something to do with soil temperature.

 

That perhaps doesn't bode well for prospects of blight.

 

Scrungee, for years I never knew what blight looked like, then one wet summer back, god knows when, in the 90s I think, blight hit my toms.
Its occured every year since, in varying degrees.
So I assume I will have problems with it every year now.
Its in my soil.

 

No?

 

Does it work like that?

 

I think it does, as I've not had a year free from it since.

 

Pete, I too have suffered from blight every year since I moved here, but before that it was just grass/wasteland. I seem to remember Dai (and others) saying that it is killed off during the winter unless there is 'blightable' material in the ground. Otherwise it's carried on the breeze. It does make you wonder though, because year on year, it seems to be getting worse.

 

Yes, as to whether people growing spuds in your locality don't dispose of them when blight hits, or just leave tubers in the ground for them to grow again the following year and infect all their neighbour's crops.

 

As far as I can tell, I'm the only 'grower' in my area...

 

It does i'm afraid. The spores created by the blight fungus (Zoospores) are short lived but if infected material is allowed to overwinter it creates Oospores which will last for many years and will jump at the first chance to infect new crops.

Blighted plants need to be burned there and then, not composted or put into the green bins to go on to infect other peoples plots when the council dish out free compost.

 

You need to then.

 

Yes, but I did not say...