26th March

Last week I posted a photo of the early Pandora leeks, This week i'v posted another and you will see the massive difference just one week of the tunnels heating up makes, and the rest of the seeds in the tunnel have germinated to with the rise in temperature.
It's good to see the temperature rising, as most of the over winter produce is finally coming to a end, and we are ready to move onto harvesting the tunnel planted produce, and get on with direct sowing new seeds inside tunnels.
Seeds like the salad bag seeds only take around 6 weeks from sowing to harvesting, Spinach and Rubi chard seeds can take around 8 to 10 weeks, last year with the really mild winter we had sown them direct into the soil at the beginning of March, but this year we have had a proper winter and sowing is a wee bit later, but the cold weather is better for killing of the weed seeds in the poughed fields.
Even if the outside temperature only reaches around 7 degrees the tunnel temperature goes well into double figures, and the Pak Choy that was planted in tunnel 2 over two months ago and has been sitting in freezing temperatures is also coming on with the temperature increase and it's looking like we could be harvesting that in a couple of weeks.
But seemingly this week we are getting hit again with more freezing temperatures and snow, great for the skiing but the Spinach, Rubi Chard and Salad bag seeds all needing to get direct sown into the tunnels, so I think it might be best to put that of for another week, just to be on the safe side.
And with polythene arriving last Friday for re sheeting one tunnel, which I had planned for this week, that will probably be put on hold till next week if we do get this low pressure arriving.
So the winter according to the forcasters isn't finished with us yet, but there is a bit of heat in the sun now and things are starting to grow and the clocks have changed the new growing season is on it's way.