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Recording the weather in your garden

One of the first things I do every morning is check the Max/Min digital thermometer in my garden and record the readings in my diary. 

I want also to record rainfall, and have suggested that Santa might like to put a rainfall gauge in my Christmas Stocking. 

Do you record the weather in your garden, and if so do you use a chart or a diary or something else, and how do you think this information contributes to your gardening?


Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





Posts

  • Busy-LizzieBusy-Lizzie Posts: 24,023

    I used to write it on my kitchen calendar, but have forgotten in the last few years. I've only been noting exceptional or surprising weather.

    Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
  • I have one of these (link is a review site, not a sales one):

    http://www.digitalham.co.uk/weather/equipment/watson-w8681/

    It's excellent and when connected to the PC I can look back at all weather readings from the day I bought it.

    A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,064

    I used to have a wee weather station which recorded temps and rainfall and sent messgaes to my PC.  That was in autumn 2008.   January 6th 2009 we had -32C and the equipment died.    Got a simple min/max thermometer after that and it died the following winter at -25C.  Haven't bothered since.

    When OH retires we're planning to move to a more shelterd garden with shorter winteres and then I'd like to start again and maybe even keep garden diary too - sowing, planting, cropping etc..

    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • It is interesting to look back isn't it?  When my parents were farming they kept weather records - no idea where they are now ...


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • There is not much point in keeping records in my part of the North East, surrounded on three sides by rolling hills and fourth by the North Sea the weather does its own thing. We just had 10 days of miserable weather when everyone else had a heat wave, end of August we had the heat wave whilst others got the floods. Brought up on Farms and walled gardens it was always obvious to me that every place had micro- climates. My Father believed in hot boxes so each year the box would be assembled the manure added when up to heat plant. One year it did not come out, why I asked, we will have a warm spring no need, (It was a  walled garden as I said) how do you know I asked, the lone bumble bees are up and about the birds are getting ready to nest and look at the trees budding up. He had been brought up in an era when people took note of nature, he knew every plant as we walked down the old mill lane, named every tree, he did not need notes he read his surroundings like a book.  I could never lace his boots as a gardener, could any of us do that now, doubt it.

    Frank.

  • I don't but a member of our gardening club does and makes a point at each meeting of reminding us what the weather etc was like in previous years on that day.We find it very interesting and amazing at how quickly we have forgotten previous years even when the weather has been extreme in some way.

  • The earliest records held in the National Meteorological Archive are private weather diaries. The earliest original manuscript held there is for Rye in Sussex from 1730-1733!. They are used by researchers looking at trends etc. Significant ones are still sometimes donated to the Archive (I used to manage the National Meteorological Library and Archive image ) 

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