21st April

With all the brassicas plants out of the tunnel getting hardened off ready for planting, the plan was to get them planted this week.

But the weather forecast was looking pretty poor to say the least.

Typical after the three weeks of really nice warm weather we have had, which has pushed to plants on, we are three weeks earlier than usual with the warm weather.

Sunday was to be a nice day, but from Monday right through the rest of the week it was rain forecast every day, not the best, when I have sixty thousand plans ready and waiting to get planted.

So, I chanced my luck and spent all Sunday bed forming the ground, so we could plant on Monday if the weather was wrong.

Monday arrived, the ground was still dry, but there were dark clouds everywhere.

But no rain yet, so we charged on and started planting, we got until 3pm then the heavens opened, and the rain arrived, but we had got fifty thousand brassicas planted.

I thought that would be planting finished for the week.

Tuesday morning arrived and I checked the soil, it looked wet, but surprisingly dry underneath.

So, we got straight back out with the planter and finished the brassicas, plus planted broad beans and the flowers.                                                                                                                  I had talked about for the flowers, hopefully to attract the butterflies away from our brassicas.

The rain still hadn’t arrived, so I swapped the veg planter for the direct seed planter and got all the beetroot seed sown.

And finally got them all fleeced, we had been lucky with the weather.

Now it was 5pm and the rain still hadn’t arrived, but it looked like it was on its way and Wednesday did look really wet.

If I could push it and get the carrots and swede sown before the rain that would be great.

So I chanced my luck again and got the Bedformer back on and bedformed more beds for the carrots and swede, by 9pm the beds were ready and still no rain.

But the rain was coming it had got windy and colder a sure sign.

By 9.15 pm I had on the seeder machine for the swede and was direct sowing them.

Still no rain and I had the swede seeds sown.

So, I Swapped over the machines and had the carrot seeder on, still no rain.

By 10.35 I had the carrots in too, I had won the race against the rain.

We had a very lucky two days and got everything I wanted planted.

We now have the leeks and onions out getting hardened off.

We will leave them out for at least a week to get hardened off and hopefully get a better run of the weather for planting them.

And the last of the big planting out in the field is the squash plants.

It will be mid-May before we need to be thinking about planting these.

So far planting has gone really well.

And the plants have definitely had a good watering in.