26th May

The field is now fully planted, with only the later crops yet to go in.

These are the purple sprouting broccoli, over winer cauliflower and we usually plant five thousand kohl Rabi with these, and we get a good prewinter harvest of them.

We have quite a few trial crops in this year, every year I usually try out something new.

More often than not they fail or are just not quite as good as I had hoped.

Sometimes it is a huge success, and we do them again.

One main trail is the flowers, every seventh bed we have direct sown broad beans and flowers.

A bed in the field is a smooth seventy-two-inch-wide bed running down the full length of the field, this is what I make with the bedformer at the start of the year with the tractor.

There are hundreds of beds prepared by the end of the season.

When we go in with the planter we plant three rows on each bed.

The beans are for harvesting and the flowers are for the butterfly to harvest rather than my brassicas, well that’s the plan, I might just have increased my butterfly population by a billion.

We have also planted over two thousand dwarf beans and peas.

They will be a nightmare for harvesting, but a great crop.

Everything apart from leeks and onions are under fleece at the moment, to protect them from all the wildlife.

It sometimes feels like we have a safari park at the farm, and that I have planted everything for them to feast on. everything that fly’s, walks, crawls and slithers about seem to think it is a free for all.

The planting weather this year has been fantastic, with weeks of nice warm dry weather.

We have planted everything in record time, and I have been through with the weeding machines twice already.

But we are now needing rain.

And luckily the forecast is for rain over the weekend and through next week.

Let’s just hope it goes of for a spell, there are no weeds right now, but they will really come in with a vengeance after a good soaking.