30th June

This week we rotovated tunnel five and got it ready for re planting.

On Tuesday morning we planted the tunnel with two and a half thousand green lettuce and two and half thousand red lettuces.

This takes up three beds of the tunnel, which leaves us one bed in here we direct sowed oriental mix, this tunnel will be the next one for harvesting our salad bags.

But on Wednesday morning as we were away to water there were only half of the green lettuce left.

The culprits were black slugs and hundreds of them.

Where did they come from, we had kohl rabi in that tunnel and spinach and Ruby chard before that and zero slugs.

Overnight an army of slugs had come in from where?

So, we got two containers and went around the tunnel picking them all up..

We estimated over five hundred slugs, but only in this tunnel.

We must have got them all because by Thursday there were only a couple to be picked up.

We use slug gone wool pellets or vermiculite around the cucumber and tomato plants, because slugs are a problem with these crops.

But in the other tunnels where we are constantly re planting this is not possible.

The reason is that we are constantly weeding these tunnels at least once a week.

This week we also got another few thousand seeds blocked.

It is the time of the year to get seeds blocked for the last of the field planting.

The first batch we have done was the over winter cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli five thousand of each.

These will get planted out in the field around the middle of August.

We will do one more big batch of field seeds very soon, romanesca cauliflower and spring cabbage and again five thousand of each.

That is the last of the field seeds for the year.

We also blocked more tunnel seeds, this will be constantly happening until the end of August.

We done lettuce red and green, spinach and ruby chard three thousand of each.

We also direct sowed another tunnel which we had harvested in here we direct sowed Milan turnips and radish.