1st May

This week we started taking the Brassicas and Onions out of the tunnel.

They need to be out for at least a week, to get hardened off before we plant them in the field.

Although they have been getting hardened off in the tunnel anyway, it has been so cold.

The cold weather has not helped the squash plants that I decided to try early.

We had blocked two thousand courgette seeds, and only three hundred hardy ones have come through.

So, with no market on Saturday, I rotovated the tunnel that we have taken the plants out off.

Then I planted the courgettes, and covered them with nice cosy fleece.

This will give us early courgettes.

And when we start harvesting the field courgettes, I will rotovate the tunnel ones in and re plant.

So, it looks like we only got about 15% germination.

But we did use just over one thousand seeds that were old seeds.

But stored correctly, like we do, they should have been ok.

Luckily the seeds are not very expensive.

And we have not blocked the Spaghetti or Pumpkin seeds yet, I was waiting until May, when you are supposed to do them.

But quite interesting is that the Uchi kuri have about 80 % germination, and the other four varieties are still coming through, so I’m not quite sure what they will be like.

We could not fit them all in the greenhouse with the heated tunnel.

So, we had to put them in the small tunnel, I only use this for bringing plants on.

It has two sets of tables running the full length of the tunnel at ither side, which I made from pallets over the winter, with both sides that gives us forty meters of table.

To help protect the squash plants, we made a cloche out of piping and fleece, and put these over the pallet tables, and it has worked, a bit but not enough.

It was a trial; we will need to block more courgettes seeds this week.

And possibly a wee bit of everything else, luckily, I still have some seeds.