23rd November

This years growing season has produced a lot of huge vegetables.

It all started with a really warm dry April and May, this had us worried at the start, that it was so dry and warm that the veg wouldn’t grow, the field was like a desert.

But they did get a few nights of light rain that helped them on their way.

One crop that really suffered was the Crown prince Squash plants.

We had planted all the Courgettes, Pumpkins, Spaghetti, and Uchi Kuri plants and they all got a wee bit of rain which helped them off to a start.

But the Crown prince never got a bit of rain, and it was in the high 20 s every day, and a extra problem is that all the squash plants are planted through bio degradable mulch film then covered with fleece, this is all to keep them cosy, because they really hate the wind and the cold, so we did lose most of those plants, but all the other squash plants came on great.

When it came to planting the Beetroot and neep seeds in May, the weather was still warm and dry, these seeds are direct sown into the soil and usually take fourteen day to come through the soil.

But after a fortnight there was only a few plants poking through the soil, so I decided we had better sow more.

Then the end of May came and with it came the rain and a lot of it, and it was still really warm, and the crops grew and grew and grew more.

And the first batch of beetroot and neeps all decided they would now grow, and so did the second batch that I had sown, so now we have loads.

And as you have probably seen the beetroot are huge , and these are the small ones, we are leaving the big ones in the field.

And the cabbages like all the other crops have grown fantastic, but again we have had to leave so many behind in the field, some are the size of the Massey’s front wheel,  if we were to harvest them, we would only get one in a crate, when we usually get twelve in a crate.

So this year we are having a very unusual problem, we are leaving some fantastic looking veg behind in the field, only to be rotovated in because they are far too large.