17th March

Last, I had been talking about we had all our main crop seeds blocked and sitting in the tunnels waiting to germinate.

With the weather being a wee bit warmer, a couple of days we had 16 degrees this makes the tunnel hit nearer 20and it has brought the seeds on.

All the leeks and onions have germinated, and all the brassicas have also germinated.

And that is now the start of seven days a week watering.

Wildlife in the fields has always been a problem; the wildlife seems to thing I plant everything for them, so they don’t have to go foraging.

But later in the summer the wildlife does venture elsewhere.

But right in behind them come the white butterfly, they also think I plant brassicas just for them to come in and eat then lay their eggs, which then turn into caterpillars and eat the veg.

But this year I have a cunning plan to out fox them.

My field fleece and net covers six beds, and we always cover the brassicas, because of the pigeons.

This year we have blocked 36 trays of flowers. I picked varieties that attract butterfly, and every seventh bed we will plant a bed of flowers.

The theory is that the butterfly will think this is amazing and stick to the flowers.

They definitely do stick to what they like the most, they never touch red cabbage, and red kale, and these are planted in amongst the brassicas that they do like.

Hopefully this works, or they might just phone their friends to say we have tasty flowers in beside tasty brassicas, and I will have all the butterflies from fife and Perthshire on our farm.

But it will look pretty.

With all the seeds germinating, including the salads it has been a push to get the tunnels ready for re sheeting.

I only had new door frames on both sides of one tunnel to finish off,

And with high pressure being on the forecast for this week the plan is to re sheet two tunnels.

So, on Sunday I got the door frames finished, fingers crossed the weather is correct and we will have both tunnels covered by Tuesday.

As soon as the cover is on, I need to repair the irrigation, this also took a battering with the high winds.

After these two are covered we will be planting in them.

This only leave the big cosy tunnel to re sheet, but I am still waiting for replacement legs.