23rd May

At long last the onions and leeks are ready, and big enough, that we can start planting them out in the field.

So the plan for this week, is to get out in the field and get the planting under way.

This year all the blocked plants for the field have taken a couple of weeks longer than usual to be big enough that we can start planting.

The reason being was that the weather in April and the start of May hasn’t been that warm.

Usually the tunnels are that hot, that we need the doors of to let the heat out, and we need to water at least three times a day.

But this season, and the last couple of weeks, I have only needed to water first thing in the morning, because the tunnels aren’t that warm.

But the plants are looking healthy, and will come on fast enough when we get them in the ground.

One problem we might have, is if we get a week of rain, all the squash plants will catch up, and they will be needing to get planted at the same time.

We should get all the onions, leeks and brassicas plants, planted in just over two weeks, that’s just under five hundred thousand plants.

If we do then, we will be straight onto planting the squash plants, there are 10 thousand of those, which we can usually do in four days.

So all going well with the weather, we should have all the blocked plants planted by the 2nd week of June.

Then I will direct sow the carrots, and after that its weeding time.

Inside the tunnels we will be constantly harvesting, rotovating and re planting all year.

And this year I have improved the feeding of the plants inside the tunnel.

We used to have a 20-litre container that was filled with seaweed feed, this I would move from tunnel to tunnel and water every line with the seaweed individually.

But this did take a lot of time, and when we are busy planting, it got missed, even though I only do it once a week.

There is a huge difference with giving them a seaweed feed and not.

So this year I got a new feeder pump, this is connected to the main line all the time, and I only need to turn two taps to run feed through the irrigation, and this pump can take the full pressure of the irrigation when it is turned on.

We have to water every day busy or not, so now I can feed as I water with no moving a container to each tunnel.