11th April

 It has been a cold week,  some mornings with frost and even a couple of days with snow.

Not the best temperatures for the plants that we have planted or the mixed salad seeds that we have direct sown in the tunnel

These seeds in nice warm temperatures, sometimes start coming through In three days.

But this batch have taken just over a week, but they are through the soil, and will shoot on as soon as the weather heats up.

The spring cabbage that we planted in another tunnel is looking great,  and coming on fantastic, this crop doesn’t mind the temperature drop just as much, but again when it heats up these will shoot on.

The kohl rabi, Rubi chard and lettuce that we blocked are in the heated greenhouse, and now all have four leaves, these will be needing planted in a couple of weeks.

So the tunnels will soon be filling up.

Rab has been busy blocking away, we now have fifty thousand onions done and seventy thousand early leeks done, still loads to do but we are on track.

The new tunnel build has taken a slow down this week, problem is Erin and Calum are on easter holidays, so it has been evening work for the moment on that.

But my fingers have been frozen.

All the tunnel hoops have ridge bars to strengthen them, and each ridge bar has two bracing bars, the end hoops have four bracing bars to help strengthen against the winds, and each alternate hoop has another smaller bracing bar, there are 29 hoops so that is two hundred and eighteen 13mm nuts and bolts to be put on the brackets and tightened up.

And that’s only the framing done.

There will be probably the same again, after the frame is done,  it is then onto the door frames, make the doors, bolt on the base rail, this is 50-meter-long times two, both sides need done,   and this is what the polythene eventually gets fixed to.

This base rail will be fixed about three feet up from the ground.

Then another base rail gets bolted all the way around at ground level, this is for side vents, so if it gets really hot, we can roll up the sides.

So yes, there is still a lot to be done.