31st May

Well I’m really glad to see the end of May, and the weather it has thrown at us.

Last week we had a week of downpours in between the sunshine.

By the end of the week the field was completely flooded, so bad that even after four days of nice warm weather from Thursday to Sunday the field still wasn’t dry enough bedform.

We still have one hundred and twenty-five thousand leeks to plant, ten thousand squash plants and all of the beetroot and swede seeds to be direct sown.

Last year at this point we had the fleece of the brassicas, and brush weeded then had made a start on the bed weeding.

Even with our new planter which is three times quicker than our old one, we still haven’t caught up, I was hoping we would, but unfortunately, we have only had a couple of days a week that the field was dry enough to start planting, and even then, it was still too wet.

To top it all, I was down on Sunday night bed forming ground to get planting started first Monday morning, and the bed former started smoking, that’s a result of it having to work all season in damp or wet soil.

So first thing Monday morning I will need to strip it, clean it, and most probably fit new bearings.

So I don’t think we will be able to start planting till Tuesday another day missed.

But on a plus side, we have spent another week in the tunnels.

They have all been weeded again, and three tunnels rotovated and re planted.

And we blocked more lettuce, kohl rabi, yellow chard (a wee trial) and another wee trial two thousand Dwarf French beans.

So the week wasn’t a dead loss, but we could do with finishing of planting in the field.

I had a wee look under the fleece where the brassicas have been planted, they are looking really good, but unfortunately the weeds love the fleece just as much, and they are looking even better.

So if we do manage to get all the planting done this week, it will be fleece off a brush weed then the bed weeder will need to be out and working.