16th May

This week I got all the beetroot and swede seeds sown.

We always leave them until May to direct sow in the field, when we get to May the soil temperature should be higher and the seeds will germinate better.

Well the soil temperature is high enough but its not really a nice warm May just yet.

Also in the tunnels all the plants seeds that we blocked of should really be pretty big by now, and we should be looking at taking them out of the tunnels.

But again with the temperatures not being that warm, they are taking a wee bit longer to grow.

So what will inevitably happen, is that all the squash plants, brassicas, leeks and onions will be needing planted at the same time.

This week we finished blocking of all of the squash plants over ten thousand done.

And when they germinate the come on really fast.

We did have to do another thousand courgette plants, we had blocked but had run out of room in the greenhouse and wee tunnel, these two places are mice free.

So we put them in the big tunnels where we bring on all of the plants thinking the mice were  away, but they weren’t, and they had a mouse party.

Out in the field there is another party going on with the Crows.

The broad beans are all up and through, and are around one inch and more above the ground.

Well the crows pull them out, looking for grubs’ underneath.

We usually have a huge problem with them doing that to the courgette and squash plants, we need to fleece them before we can leave.

If we don’t, we would be back in the morning and I have seen almost a whole field of courgettes and squash plants pulled out and dead.

Pretty much every job we do we are on the defence against wildlife.

Slugs come in their thousands, from who knows where to eat the cucumbers, we use slug gone, or last year vermiculite to sort that, but we do have a tunnel full of frogs too that help, again where do they come from ?, and where do they go at the end of the season that is a mystery.

Out in the field we then have the pigeons, they go for all brassicas, so the minute we have them planted, the fleece needs to be put on.

Carrots is another crop that the carrot fly loves, has anyone ever seen a carrot fly ? I haven’t, and don’t know anyone who has, they must be microscopic or a SAS carrot killer that comes in and out unnoticed.

The same goes for the fly that eats the neep seed, nobody has ever seen one of these.

But both bugs do creep around, fleece stops the swede bug, it also stops the carrot fly.

But we plant carrots in between the leek and onion crops.

Seemingly the smell of the onions and leeks means the carrot fly can’t smell the carrot seed, and they don’t like flying up and down over the leeks to land on the carrot bed ither.

Again who found this out when you can’t see them, so the SAS carrot fly has got a really bad nose for smelling and can’t parachute down over the leeks.

But its squadron can still eat a whole field if it gets a chance.