5th May

By the finish of last week, we did get all of the onions planted, and we tried to make a start on the late leeks.

We needed five thousand to finish a row, and if they went in great, I was going to finish of planting the late leeks, which would then only need the Squash plants left to plant.

But as expected they were still a wee bit on the small side.

They were going in but weren’t keeping their full root ball, so an extra week of sitting in their trays will really bring them on.

The late leeks were blocked last, so do need that extra week, we have just managed to get all the planting done so quickly this year with the great spell of weather that we have caught up.

So, with a bit of breathing space from planting in the field, it was time to prepare a tunnel for the courgette’s, chillies and climbing French beans.

Tunnel one was where they were going, and we still had a bit of leafy cabbage in there.

So, we cut that out for the deliveries, got more compost spread then rotovated.

Next job is to get the terminate out, this covers the whole of the tunnel and we have holes already cut in it for the plants from previous years.

This just prevents us from having to weed, there is a big enough job cutting side shoots and tying up the cucumbers, not having to weed it really helps.

We do need to use a half of one other tunnel for the rest of the cucumbers and tomatoes, but we don’t put anything down in here as it is only half a tunnel.

By the end of the week, we had the climbing flat beans and chillies planted plus one row of Cucumbers.

We can get sixty-five plants per row and each tunnel can take four rows.

We usually have one row of Climbing beans, one row of chillies, three rows of Cucumbers and one row of tomatoes.

This will all be planted by Monday.

Then it is out to the field, time to start weeding, not bed weeding just yet.

But the first flush of weeds have now come through, and the brassicas have been in for over ten days so they will have a good hold now.

So, this week we will take the fleece of and go through with the weeder on the tractor, then we will need to re cover the crops, they are still to wee and the pigeons will come in for a feast.