17th November

This week we managed to get all the lettuce, Ruby chard and Spinach planted.

So that is now all the tunnels fully planted for over winter.

We have fifteen thousand spring onions in tunnel one.

Tunnel two still has Ruby Chard and spinach in it that we are still harvesting, this tunnel is the one that got ripped in the last storm, and we put a cover over the ripped part, just to protect the crop.

When that has been harvested, we will be taking the sheet of, repairing some tunnel hoops and re sheeting it, this tunnel will be where we start blocking the seeds in January.

Tunnel three has three and a half thousand over winter lettuce in it.

Tunnel four we planted fifteen thousand spinach in two rows, in each tunnel we can get four rows, the other two rows in this tunnel already had two varieties of lettuce planted.

And tunnel five we planted fifteen thousand ruby chard; the other two rows still have lettuce in it which we are still harvesting.

The two big cosy tunnels have been planted for a few months now; they have ten thousand spring cabbage and ten thousand Romanesco cauliflower in these.

The Romanesco cauliflower is a trial; it will be an amazing crop if we get this early next year.

Out in the field I had talked about blocking swede and beetroot seed a few months ago.

Which we planted and had already harvested the beetroot.

Again, this was a field trail.

Every year for as long as I can remember the way swede and beetroot have always been sown was direct sown in the field.

Well, you need three hundred thousand seeds for this, because they are field sown germination is not always the best, with the weather, it is ither to wet, this year to dry, to cold or to warm, then we have to fleece, because there is an army of beesties that love to eat the seeds.

Finally, you have the direct sown seed competing with the weed seed, which makes the weeding a nightmare.

So, I thought let’s do a wee trial and block the seed the same way as we do all the crops, then we are planting an established plant, in a newly bedformed row in the field, the plants get a huge start over the weeds, making weeding much easier and quicker.

The beetroot worked amazing, and this week we started harvesting the swede, the difference is huge, uniformed growth, exact spacing between the swede, and we only machine weeded them once and bed weeded once.

And I will only need twenty thousand seed. My trails don’t always work, this is a winner.