22nd April

 At long last the weather has changed.

The high-pressure weather system did arrive, bringing dry weather and wind ye ha.

On Wednesday we got the last of the leeks harvested, and Thursday, finally got the field ploughed.

The leeks this year have lasted much longer than usual, it has been a great crop.

Which is surprising, if you think back to last May, we had all the plants planted, then we had a month and a half with blazing sunshine and zero rain.

The field resembled the Shara desert, but it just shows, if the plants have a great root base, and get a good start to establish their roots in the soil, they can survive a long hot dry spell.

It also helps that we do not have huge heavy machinery, and when we harvest through the year, we only go in with the vintage Fergie, no cab and about fifty years old.

So, we are not compacting the soil, which gives the roots a chance to get down for any moisture.

If we do get the heat that has been forecasted, we might still be on track for planting in the first week of May.

But right now the plants are looking great, but not very big, there has been no heat to bring them on.

In anticipation of the heat arriving and the plants shooting on, I made a start on the laying out tunnel.

This tunnel I am making with old bent tunnel hoops, I got these up last Thursday.

We will then pull over the bird netting that we use on the field, this will save all the wildlife coming in for a feast on all the nice young fresh plants in their trays.

We can then lay all the plants out for a week minimum, to get them hardened of ready for planting.

This tunnel is a good size thirty meters long by fifteen meters wide, and cost zero, that is always good.

I have had the old bent hoops sitting for over five years, after a storm we lost a tunnel, most of the hoops were completely ruined, but 7 were not too bad, and with a bit of bending, we manged to get them back into a reasonable shape.

They could never take polythene, because they would just bend at their weak points in the first wind.

But there will be no stress with bird netting.

I always thought they might come in handy for something.

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We seem to be having some issues with e mails, if you have not received a reply from an e mail they may be in your spam, we thought it was an issue with us, but it seems it is actually an issue with the e mail provider, technology is great when it works, not so great when it does not.