22nd September

This week we started harvesting the purple sprouting, Broccoli.

It is looking great and tastes fantastic, although a few months too early.

I looked back on last year’s Facebook, and we were harvesting it on the 9th of March along with the over winter Cauliflowers, that is a wee bit later than we would usually be harvesting them.

And last year the crop was around waist hight, this year it is only around a foot tall.

But this year’s summer has been exceptionally warm and dry.

Which has just stressed the crop into producing far earlier than usual.

If I had a vision into the future I would have blocked the purple sprouting seeds around now, then we would be harvesting it around March.

The plan is to have these two crops ready for harvesting around the beginning of the year, which is a great time to be harvesting these types of crops, because we are all getting a wee bit bored of just root crops every week, but we do live in Scotland.

The Cauliflower on the other hand looks like it will still be ready around the same time as usual and is looking just like it always does at this time of the year.

In the tunnels we are still harvesting Cucumbers and tomatoes, but they are slowing down now with all the leaves dying of.

But the salad, spinach and Ruby chard are still looking great.

We have just started harvesting a new batch od Spinach and Ruby chard that was only planted around a month ago, and at this time of the year it always looks better than it does in the summer.

This week we will be planting another eight thousand lettuces in one tunnel.

And we are right in the middle of blocking seeds to fill the tunnels for over winter.

We have already blocked fifteen thousand spring onions, and this week we will do three thousand five hundred red hiver lettuce which sits over the winter, plus the same amount of Spinach and again the same amount of Ruby chard, these too will sit over winter and be ready early next year.

When these have all been planted, we will have two tunnels left unplanted, but in these we will plant dwarf broad beans, we will not really get a crop of off these beans, their job is just to fix nitrogen back into the soil, and when we rotovate them back in the stalks help to give great soil structure.

We always try and do two tunnels each winter with Beans.

It makes a huge difference the following year.