21st July

Last week’s weather was wet and warm, great for the plants in the field, but not so good for getting the over winter plants planted.

But we managed to catch a couple of weather windows in between the huge downpours.

On Sunday I bed formed the field so it was ready for planting.

Monday was a dry day, so with Erin, Calum, and their cousin Isla we got the first batch of winter Cauliflower and half of the purple sprouting broccoli planted, before the first huge downpour arrived.

I did not think we were going to get the rest in as it had rained so much.

But with the ground being so dry it had soaked it up the downpour, and we managed to get planting again at 7 am on Tuesday morning.

By 11am we had all the plants planted, ten thousand winter cauliflower, ten thousand purple sprouting broccoli and five thousand Kohl rabi.

Then the rain arrived again, but we still needed to put fleece on, or the pigeons would eat all our nice newly planted plants.

Luckily Wednesday morning was dry again and we managed to get them all fleeced and protected.

With this heat and the rain, the squash plants are really coming on, they all have three to four squash per plant, so it looks like they will be a fantastic crop this year.

One crop we do need to learn a wee bit more about is Strawberries.

I didn’t expect to get much of a crop the first year.

We bought two hundred and fifty strawberry plants, and we had ordered organic compost bags for the to be planted in.

The first problem was that the pallet of compost got lost in delivery, usually it only takes two days for compost to arrive, this pallet eventually arrived four weeks late.

So, we had to use seed blocking compost that we had for bringing all our seeds on, or we would have lost all the strawberries.

Not the best start, they did do well until they hit the eight-week mark, and no amount of feeding seaweed would help.

We have had a few strawberries per plant; this week we started strawberry maintenance.

After google help and phone calls, we now have all the dead leaves of, and we have loads of side shoots. Sometimes two on each side shoot

These side shoots need to be cut off, just like we do with the Cucumbers and Tomatoes.

There is a knuckle, sometimes two on each side shoot, these are where new growth comes from.

These can be cut and replanted, giving new strawberry plants.

Some of the side shoots that were on the compost there were roots coming out of the knuckles.

At the end we had an extra fifty strawberry plants, which we have potted up, we should get another couple of hundred before the end of the year.

Once these have a good root structure, we are going to make a bed in the ninety-meter cosy tunnel and plant them in there, here they will be established for next year.

Every year we learn something new.