17th June

Last week at long last managed we managed to get the last of the squash plants planted.

We now only have the over winter crops to go in.

We will plant a few thousand late cabbages next week, and in last we will be planting the over winter purple sprouting broccoli and Cauliflower.

These seeds we will block around the end of July.

But right now, it is weeding time in the field.

The bed weeder is out, and every day we will be hand weeding in the field.

The first crops that we are weeding is all the brassicas, that have been planted.

Then it will be onto the onions and leeks.

This will be the main job for the next few months.

I go in with the camera guided weeder, directly in front of the bed weeder.

This takes almost every weed out only leaving the weeds around the plant, making the job of hand weeding far easier, it also loosens the soil with the fingers on weeder, making it far easier to pull the weeds out.

Before I forget, I was asked a question over a week ago, if direct sowing the Beetroot, Swede and Carrots in between the onions worked.

For anyone that missed what this was about.

I have read that direct sowing these seeds in between onions or leeks, stops the fly that eats the swede/carrot seeds, which would then save us having to cover them with fleece straight away.

Seemingly the reason it works, is that the fly cannot smell the seed, because of the strong smell of the leeks and onions, and they do not like to fly up and over the leeks and onions, to get to the direct sown seeds of their choice to eat.

Well, the answer is, NO, it defiantly does not work.

Our microscopic fly that I have never seen on our farm, have no sense of smell and are far better aviators than the ones that have been tested.

We have no swede or carrots growing in between the leeks and onions that I direct sowed.

So, I re sowed them and fleeced them as we have always had to do before.

I did wonder how they managed to test this out.

But it does not work on our farm.

Potatoes

Our potatoes are finished now, and the new ones are a few weeks away, so we may have a couple of weeks without potatoes, we will maybe try to go with sweet potatoes until they are ready, they will not be as many as they are quite expensive.