2nd June

June has arrived and brought the desperately wanted rain.

Last week we got a dry day and went through all the leeks and onions with the weeding machines.

This week we could do with going through all the brassicas, swede, beetroot, and squash plants.

But they are all under fleece, and this is not the best to be taking of and on again if it is wet.

We do however need to take some fleece of off the kale, this week we are going to make a start on harvesting the kale crops for the orders and extras, they are looking good and no beastie eaten leaves just yet.

The potatoes are coming to an end, and the early ones are not ready yet, so we might have around three weeks without any.

The problem was caused by no rain after they were planted, which was great for us humans no rain and heat, but plants like some rain, the crop is still looking great and is starting to swell up now although slightly later than usual.

It is now time to get the bed weeder out and into the field.

Although I have been going through the crops weekly with the weeding machines, we still need to weed around each plant the machines cannot get that close.

I made a machine a few years ago that has a wee petrol engine and self-drives down the two hundred- and fifty-meter beds.

Each bed has three rows of plants, so I made a frame with a roof and made three orthopaedic type beds that we can lie face down on and weed as we go along, each person weeding one row, this is far easier than hands and knees.

You can buy these machines but even second hand they cost over fifteen thousand pounds.

I managed to make one up with old machinery we had lying around, and the final cost excluding my time was only three hundred pounds.

We will be on this bed weeding machine every week for the next couple of months hand weeding away.

Inside the tunnels everything is coming on now.

The two hundred and fifty courgettes we have in the big ninety-meter cosy tunnel are almost ready for harvesting, the courgettes are around an inch in length, I would be expecting to be harvesting a wee bit by the end of this week, and when they start, they really start producing, it will be courgettes for everyone soon.

The cucumbers, tomatoes, flat beans, raspberries, and strawberries all have flowers now and the start of some fruit.