13th November
The crops that we planted in the tunnels around a month and a half ago are looking good.
The winter lettuce, which I thought would be a gamble this far north from the seed company (Cornwall) are looking amazing, they have almost doubled in size, if they keep growing at the speed they have been, we will have lettuce for Christmas time.
The Chinese cabbage after planting has taken a sprout and looking great, these should not be ready until next year, along with the Spring cabbage and broad beans.
Out in the field we are still harvesting purple sprouting broccoli, just wee bits now of off the first break, but that has been over two months harvesting from that batch.
The second batch we have been walking through and cutting some of the big heads.
It looks like they might be ready for Christmas time too.
The purple sprouting has been an amazing crop.
The winter cauliflower that is in the field, again is looking great.
We have twenty thousand plants, two varieties of ten thousand each.
These should start in the new year and take us right into March.
We have been cutting some, but it is just the odd one here and there.
I am considering pulling fleece over them, just when the snow arrives, they will be standing above the snow and the pigeons will come in.
If we have a few weeks of snow cover and hard frost, the pigeons will wipe them out.
I have planned for that, and I had ordered insect netting just as we were blocking them, this is much heavier duty than the fleece, and will stand the winter winds.
It looks just like fleece when it is on the field, but is a very finely woven mesh.
It does cost three times more than fleece, but is supposed to last ten years, when we are very lucky to get three out of fleece.
I will also use it for covering all the brassicas crops at the beginning of August.
August is when the white butterfly comes in for a visit in their hundreds of thousands, and lay their eggs.
They wipe out a lot of brassicas, this year was not too bad, still bad enough.
But I have had times when they are that bad, we can lose almost all our cabbages, Brussels and black kale, they do not really go for any root veg, leeks onions, red cabbage, or green kale
And if you remember from one of the weekly stories from away back in June, I had said that we had to re sow the carrots.
But I did think it was a bit too late, well we have a pretty good crop, the yellow carrots are looking amazing, we are going to start harvesting them now.
