16th November

We are almost in mid-November and the weather has been very mild and wet, the field is like a paddy field, we have some crops that have been harvested, and usually we go though them with Disc harrows which chops up the waste leaves and stalks into a mulch, which is very good feeding for the soil, but until the frost arrives or we get a good spell of dry weather that job will have to wait.

One other thing we are seeing is that inside the tunnels, we have planted purple sprouting broccoli, pack choy, over winter cauliflower and spring cabbage, these are all now huge with the mild weather, usually we would expect the weather to be cooler at this time of the year, which holds the plants back till early in the new year, then we would be hoping to harvest them around the end of March into April.

Some of the spring cabbage are almost looking like they are ready for harvesting, but they need to wait it isn’t spring yet, and we still have winter cabbage to harvest.

Some of the purple sprouting plants are about two and a half feet tall already, but these were a trail this year in the tunnel, because we have planted them out in the field a few times over the years, and if the bird netting gets blown of over the winter, the wild life think it’s feeding time and swoop in and have a party and leave us with no crop.