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GREVILLE

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Weather blog continued....

Lanzarote: 29th December Sunny 21c @ 11.20 (Airport)
Gran Canaria 29th PM Sunny 22c
30th Sunny light scattered cloud 22c.
GREVILLE

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Met up with some friends who had moved to Lanzarote from Las Palmas for work reasons and had a 'tour' of the English occupied areas in towns outside the tourist areas.

Most of them live in Guime in the middle of the island and very few carry 'full' gardens. Many of the ex-pats go 'minimalist' and have a few specimen cacti and succulents. Any palms are mainly Phoenix and Washingtonia. Most of the garden spaces are much larger than the Gran Canaria equivalents yet they stock fewer plants.

A sign of the times is that about 20% of the homes are empty and/or up for sale.
GREVILLE

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Wifi is soooo sloooooow. Can barely get past the home page :roll: Got a better signal in Lanzarote.

Gran Canaria weather 31st December 2012 Sunny. Patchy cloud PM 22c
1st January 2013 Fair AM More cloudy PM 21c

Thought we had thunder at midnight turn of the year. The fireworks that went off reverberated everywhere. They make much more of New Year than they do of Xmas in the Canaries.
GREVILLE

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Gran Canaria weather 2nd January: Sunny spells increasing patchy cloud AM. Mostly cloudy, rain traces and 20c PM.

I searched through the Wunderground site almost daily some two weeks before leaving to monitor the forecasts. I have to say they were remarkably accurate on the ten day sequence. The few days when more cloud appeared and even the light precipitation were correctly predicted.

Haven't seen the irrigation working this holiday so I gave my succulents a good drink. Last winter there was a complete absence of rain but I gather there have been three rain days at the start of this winter, which accounts for the barren areas having a distinctly green hue when I arrived.

The early rain helped the wildflower mix on Lanzarote to get started while I was there. Most noticeable was a deep blue forget-me-not lookalike. There were also clumps of what looked like flowering rocket and loads of anthemis. An English resident (the garden wall had 'Casa Hatton' tiled on it by the entrance) planted out some Lavandula Canariensis as a hedge in the border at the bottom of his front wall. The next plot was empty but a few squares metres of land adjacent to this property had a mass of self sown seedlings from the lavender. I was sorely tempted to take a few and bring them home but they hate root disturbance :(
GREVILLE

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Not such a bad change in the weather :D . Left Las Palmas with 19c and home in South London with 12c. Perhaps our normal winter weather has gone on holiday icon_thumright
GREVILLE

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Sand put what few pics I got from the cactus garden in Lanzarote on to a hard drive so at least I have one or two images to share.
2012ImagestoOrganise 234.JPG
The upper levels of the amphitheatre arrangement concentrate on smaller cacti but show off their artistic qualities brilliantly.
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Yorkshire Kris
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Thanks for sharing. It's hard to imagine cacti growing well in this country what with all the rain I'm the last 8 months.
GREVILLE

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Just back from a quick visit to Gran Canaria to visit friends (that includes some favourite plants :D ) We took a vow of abstinence for TV, newspapers and internet so this is a post - post.

If anyone is off for a winter hol there, I'm recommending Cocodrilo Park. More than a zoo, it's a long-running sanctuary of unusual unwanted, cast out, bereaved pets decorated with some pretty good plant stock. The usual date palms have been supplemented with some interesting new planting and the cactus garden is particularly impressive. Not expensive and there is one free bus-ride there and back from the main areas of the south coast . Local tourist papers carry discount vouchers.

The crocodiles are the stars of the show along with the cutest, cuddliest tigers and the rudest chimps you'll ever see. Not the equal of Palmitos Park but more than worth a visit for something slightly different.
GREVILLE

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Resurrected this thread with what appears to be four years of posting missing.

I had posted some info about growing Colocasia in the very dry climate here. The leaves keep going over prematurely and tend to force the corms into dormancy from which they don't seem to come back. I bought another winter dormant Pink China back from the UK in February and kept it in a receptacle of water that would evaporate around the plant to raise the humidity and I seem to have kept the leaves for longer. Keeping no more than two leaves at any time seems to make the plants go dormant too readily. I usually keep three leaves now. A blip occurred when I had to extend my visit back to the UK last month and the plant dried up. Back for a week and it has quickly restarted. Let's see it now copes with high summer here.
GREVILLE

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rps20180607_221751_931.jpg
à
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This was after six weeks.

Pretty much matches the UK growth rate I get when I start them off in the greenhouse in early spring.
GREVILLE

A Canary Twitter

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Can't believe how small the pot is for such a big plant. Spotted this in a residencial area of San Fernando. It's north facing so it doesn't get that much sun.
GREVILLE

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What happened to the picture?
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Still having trouble getting the images up
GREVILLE

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The last three months here have been cooler than average. What a contrast with the weather in the UK over the same period. A number days in April were considerably warmer in the UK than on Gran Canaria! If they were unusual one-off's ( and it WAS unusual - one maximum in London was a full 9c warmer than Las Palmas.) much of May followed suit. If that wasn't extraordinary enough more than half the days in June have gone the same way! A more general summer warming trend looks likely here on the islands now so this weird situation should normalise..........just in time for me to return to the UK next week!!

Staying for the rest of the Summer. Sorry, guys, you know what that means......the fine weather will break!!
GREVILLEAJ
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A Canary Twitter

Post by GREVILLEAJ »

Not long back in the Canaries after two and a half months in the UK but red faced after the comment about the weather breaking in the last post :oops:

Red faced with a double meaning. I had no idea the amazing heat in the UK would last much of the summer so I've eaten my words and secondly, redfaced because I returned to first genuine Canarian summer heatwave. There haven't been too many days at my home town here when the maximum temperature was higher than 25c the entire summer. Today the temperatures are widely between 30c and 36c.

It can't be often I come to the UK in Summer to cool off from the Canarian heat and not manage it :lol:
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