18th June

Every week and  every day are a weeding day at this time of the year, it never stops, if only we could sell weeds, they grow in any conditions and are everywhere.

Last week we were due to start weeding the brassicas crops, they have been under the fleece since they were planted

We always start of with bed weeding the Leeks and Onions, they are never fleeced, and we can get in routinely with the brush weeder, so the Leek and Onion bed’s never look that bad for weeds, there are only weeds in between the leeks to weed.

But when I say it’s time to weed the brassicas, so we need to take the fleece of, all there is a field full of weeds around one foot tall with no crop in sight, and the face on any one new is a picture, it looks like an impossible job.

But I get the brush weeder on and go through the crop, the field looks way better, and the larger weeds are actually much easier to bed weed.

We have now bed weeded all the onions, all the early and mid-season leeks, plus all the fleece has been of the cabbages all weeded and re fleeced.

At the end of the week we moved onto weeding the broad beans.

This week we will try and weed the Beetroot that were direct sown, but the crop is pretty poor, they didn’t germinate very well as they were sown in the long hot dry spell we had a couple of weeks ago, then we will take the fleece of off the Kale crops and weed them, then last it will be the late Leeks, then it’s Back to the start and do them all over again, we will weed each crop at least three times, the Leeks and onions will need done at least four times, depending on the weather.

Both the Beetroot and Neeps were direct sown, at the beginning of May as normal, but we had a long dry and very warm spell of weather after they were sown, and unfortunately, they didn’t germinate very well.

I have left them, but we did do more and luckily, they got rain almost straight away, this batch has germinated well, so hopefully we should be ok for Beetroot and Neeps again this year.

In the tunnels we had harvested a full row of Cabbages last week, so we got that rotovated and re planted the bed with Chinese Cabbage.

This week we should have another three beds fully harvested in the Tunnels, and we have Lettuce, fennel, Celery and more Chinese Cabbage already to get planted.

Out in the field this week, we will be planting Romanesca Cauliflower and Purple sprouting Broccoli.

Then it’s weeding and more weeding.