Living on the Atlantic coast as we do, has it’s benefits, and I’m not just talking about the beaches. It helps to moderate our climate, and means that in summer we do not suffer the extremes of temperature that they do a little further inland. The downside of this, as I am sure I have mentioned many times before, is that we have quite a lot of rain….. although in some ways this is no bad thing, as we do need the water to help vegetation. The real problem lies with the unpredictability of our weather. Martime climates are rarely settled, and can change in a heartbeat.

It was only Saturday afternoon when I made the post about my famous ‘fried eggs’ (sunshine with a little light cloud) – a weather forecast for our area taken from the web. By Monday night, just over 48 hours later, this forecast had changed to what you see above – normal pruning weather had been restored.

A sudden change in the weather at this time of year is not however, too much of a disaster, and simply means that the guys that are pruning have to pack their waterproofs. It becomes much more of an issue in summer and autumn.

In summer, on the occassions that we do have to treat our vines, we not only need a bit of dry weather, but for the treatment to be properly distributed, we also need a period that is not too windy. If the treatment that we give does not have time to dry and at least a short contact with the vines, then we might as well pour it down the drain. The real issue being that the best and most eco-friendly applications are always the most expensive, and we simply cannot afford to waste the time and money.

In autumn we have our harvest, when quite naturally, we pray for good weather to gather our crop.