Between Alchemy and a Dark art

This week: Our strange winter weather; Between Alchemy and a Dark art; More on weather and climate;

​Well, I’ve survived the first week of 2025.

To celebrate New Year’s Day, I was out in the warm sunshine with my camera. In the garden I have Narcissi in flower in several places. Covered in dew, the flower head’s were weighed down with the amount of moisture on each plant.

The weather this week has been mixed with 15mm of rain but also high humidity, together with clear night skies. So today (Saturday) I actually had some radiation frost in a couple of areas.

This happens when the ground cools quickly and condensation forms on grass and plants.

As the ground cools water condenses and freezes on surfaces. Although just above the ground the temperature is above freezing and at the height where air temperature’s are measured it could be three or more degrees above freezing.

This does make the frost on exposed leaves look very pretty.

I started to dig the winter weeds out of my vegetable plot this week. I broke out my wellington boots (green of course), but after around an hour of removing weeds, my wellies were “well clarted” – a wonderful Yorkshire dialect term to describe large amounts of thick, sticky mud clinging all around the wellington’s soles.

In addition, I had mud all over the fork, the handle and my gloves, so I gave up. Because I have a clay loam, after a lot of rain, it really becomes unworkable.

I need to wait for the soil to dry a bit before I continue.

Being the start of the year, I have planted the first of my New Year seeds.

I have had polystyrene seed pots warming in my propagator for over a week now, so the inside temperature and the soil temperature is around 15°C. This is an ideal temperature to start seeds in.

We have no idea what the spring will bring, or whether there will be a cold snap at some time between now and March.

The month of March is when the soil temperature here really begins to warm and plantingb can take place. So I want to be ready.

Using a dibbler I make one or two holes in each pot, of the correct depth for the seed. Then I use tweezers to pick up and drop the small seeds into the holes. Finally I press the soil down so the seed makes contact with the moist growing medium.

There are a few more things which I want to plant up, but there is plenty of time…

Our strange winter weather

Mid-winter is the time of year when I prune everything which needs pruning.

Pruning is by species, so the citrus do not need touching until the end of winter when the wind covers come off. Grape vines need doing NOW!

When I was putting the covers on the citrus at the start of December, there was a lot of blossom on the oranges and lemons. By the time I remove the covers the fruit will have set, so I know what to cut and what to leave.

Other species like drupes and soft fruits are pruned when the trees are dormant. The problem I have is that because of climate change, our winters are getting shorter and some trees don’t go dormant.

I was looking this week at my Almond trees and I realised that the leaf buds are swelling already.

Almond’s blossom before coming into leaf, and here in Dol that usually happens at the end of January. Because my trees are close to the hill behind my home, they get little winter sunshine, so tend to be a little later.

However this year, instead of the trees being completely deciduous, they have kept green leaves for ther whole of the winter. Once again, this is just not normal.

They are not the only deciduous trees to have kept their leaves.

In the Top Orchard I have two substantial, old plum trees. One is a Myrobalan “Cherry Plum”. It is usually the first plum tree into leaf, the first with blossom and the first to lose its leaves in the autumn.

What happened last year was that we had a much cooler than average September. Then in October and November temperatures rose again, so the tree produced new growth shoots and leaves.

In December when we have had some winter cold, instead of losing these leaves, the shoots have continued to grow and produce leaves.

Now this is not all over the tree, however there are a substantial number of leaves all across the tree.

There was also a lot of blossom in October and this has produced fruit. They are still small, but the fruits have not fallen, yet…

Between Alchemy and a Dark art

My books all say that you should prune Almonds when they are dormant. But when a tree doesn’t go dormant, even when it should, what do you do?

The more I looked at the tree, the more I realised it desperately needs a good “haircut”, but it is clearly bursting into life.

The problem with pruning when trees are actively growing, is that the sap is flowing from the roots and if you cut the a branch it may not heal and the open wound can let a virus in.

This of course means that other trees, which may not be displaying such advanced spring growth, yet, are also probably ahead of where I would expect them to be.

So it means that I need to “get my skates on” and start pruning.

I have a couple of books on the subject and I have a good idea of what I am supposed to be doing. However this varies between species.

There is also a difference in when you prune. Apricots are pruned when the new leaves and blossom are appearing, whereas apples and pears are pruned when they are dormant and again in the summer after fruiting.

I have already pruned some of the grape vines, but there are more which need doing, then there are my less usual trees, like my Medlar and the Pecans and Pistachios.

We have a mixed week of weather for the next week, with rain, sunshine, wind, and cloud, but not necessarily all at the same time, or on the same day!

Maybe I’ll practice the “Dark art” of pruning…

More on weather and climate

It is so nice to see a noticeable difference in the amount of daylight at the end of the day. The late afternoon’s are lighter for longer and we are only two weeks past the winter solstice.

I’m not a “Flat Earther”, but sometimes a flattened map of the globe can be useful to explain a point. If you look at a globe, it isn’t easy to see exactly places which are on the same line of latitude.

Dol is 43°N and I realised how different the climate is when I received an email from a reader in Wisconsin before Christmas, saying that we shared the same surnrise and sunset times.

I hadn’t appreciated that my Mediterranean climate was on the same latitude as Wisconsin, where it is extremely cold with deep winter snows!

Here the sun is warm, so much so that I was taken by surprise this week when I walked out of the dining room and saw smoke blowing around the citrus orchard.

It only took me a second to realise that it was steam rising from the protection around the citrus trees, as the sun hit the netting and evaporated the heavy dew. But for that split second, it just looked like smoke.

We have had high humidity for about three weeks. As an example, yesterday it varied between 80% and 97%. This combined cold and humidity has meant that everything has been covered with a heavy dew, often for the whole day.

So when warm sunshine hits damp, dark surfaces, the heat quickly evaporates the dew creating visible clouds of steam.

Drops of dew have been everywhere to be seen, leading to some photo opportunities. Although I have failed to take a photograph of the colour spectrum caused when sunlight hits and then passes through a drop of dew.

They all look nice, none the less.

The downside is that high humidity and negligible wind means that my wood stove is not at its most efficient. This is because the outside flue is cold and wet as well.

All in all, it has not been a bad first week of the New Year. NCG