12th May

 Last week I was talking about the late leeks, we had made a start in planting them.

We got one row done but they were a bit on the wee side, so I decided to leave them for a week to grow and I gave them a seaweed feed.

They have come on fantastic with the warm weather and the seaweed feed, they now have a great root ball and will be ready for planting this week.

So, with a week of off the planting we had lots to catch up on.

First job was to get the cucumbers planted.

We had already cut out the last of the spring cabbage, got the compost spread, rotovated and the terimate down.

By the end of the day, we had the two hundred and forty cucumbers planted, sixty-five climbing French beans and sixty-five chillies planted.

One job done.

All the tunnels needed a good weed as we have been out planting, and Ryan that helps us out in the tunnels through the summer had to go away for two weeks TA training at the worst time of the year for us, but he was back, so he spent the full week getting on top of that job.

This then freed up me and Rab to head back out to the field and give all the crops that we have planted their first weed with the camera guided weeder on the tractor.

I now have a brush weeder on the back, this is a bit like a road sweeper but with small tunnels the plants go through and brushed at ither side, this brushes the soil behind the camera guided weeder throwing the weeds all over the place and really killing them.

The biggest problem we have before weeding in the field, is that we need to take all the fleece of first.

This takes half a day as all the brassicas crops are covered.

The weeding with the tractor only takes about six hrs right now, but it will soon double in time when we have everything planted.

But right after weeding we need to get the fleece straight back on as the pigeons come right in behind us, this then takes another half a day.

Tis left just one more job needing done.

All the squash plants were needing taken out of the blocking tunnel to harden of.

I’m planning on planting them right after the late leeks.

So hopefully I will be writing up in next weeks newsletter all the fifty late leeks and four thousand squash plants are planted.

The weather is looking good so it should all go to plan.

And lastly Rab blocked more Lettuce, Kohl Rabi, and Parsley seeds.