7th July

This week has been a week of weeding in the tunnels and out in the field.

But we did have a bit of a breakdown with the brush weeder.

We always go in front of the weeders on the bed weeding machine with the camera guided weeder and the brush weeder with the john deere.

This helps loosen the soil up and only leaves a bit for the weeders to hand weed around the plants.

The camera guided weeder is on the front of the tractor and the brush weeder on the rear; both together make a great job.

But on Wednesday the brush weeder was sitting way back with the brushes almost on the ground when it was lifted, not what it is supposed to be like.

The brush weeder is a bit like a road sweeper, and when we lower it onto the bed it brushes the top 3 inches of soil, this throws the weeds and all the roots killing them.

With other weeding machines they do get the weeds but if they still have roots they can re root fairly easily.

The brushes almost float on the frame which is attached to the tractor, and they are held on by box section metal.

This is where the problem was.

The box section had broken at the bottom and the brushes were holding in by the skin of their teeth.

So, it involved a complete strip down to the get box section of so I could re weld the broken parts.

With that done and repaired, I then bolted on two huge chains that would take the extra weight of the brushes when we lift it at the end of each row.

So now the chains can take the weight as we turn and not have all the weight on two sections of box section, so hopefully this won’t happen again.

Now back onto the weeding, we are now going over the leeks and onions for the third and last time, and they are looking clean, with the onions and leeks not far away from being ready for harvesting.

This week was the first harvesting from the courgettes in the field, so it won’t be long now until we have enough courgettes for everyone on the deliveries.

In the tunnels we had our first harvest of French climbing beans, they will be on the web page for ordering as an extra, along with Raspberries we had our first harvest of them this week.

Next week I won’t be writing a newsletter.

Me and Erin are of to do the west highland way, she has been wanting to do it for a while and we are camping as we go along, fingers crossed for some good weather.