21st June

Last week it was time to get the fleece of off the brassica’s plants.

It’s been on from the day we planted them, as brassicas plants are pigeon’s caviar, and they could wipe out a crop over the weekend.

Funnily though, there are loads of farms around us that grow hundreds of acres of brassicas plants, and there is never fleece or pigeons in sight, they are all conventional farms and use sprays through out the growing season, so obviously the pigeons can’t stand this and never go near it.

The fleece has been on our crop for over a month, and the plants have come on great.

But the weeds come on greater.

When we take the fleece of all you can see is a braw, lush well grown field of weeds, with not a plant in sight.

This is normal.

But we get the brush weeder on the John Deere and the grubber on the Fergie, and we set about weeding in between the rows.

Its Nicks first year of seeing this and was amazed at the result, after we had been through the field of weeds.

Yes, there are still weeds, but the field of weeds is now a field of nice neat beds, with each bed visible with a line of three rows on each bed, and the crop is now visible and here the bed weeding begins.

Now we can go in with the bed weeder and weed around the brassica’s plants, but then we need to re fleece, the pigeons will keep coming back,

So with putting the fleece back on, the process all happens again, but the second time round the plants have a huge head start over the weeds and the job is usually much easier and quicker.

Luckily the pigeons don’t like the taste of Leeks or onions so we don’t need to fleece these, so with this crop its far easier, but we still need to brush weed and bed weed at least twice throughout the season.