27th July

The crops in the field are all coming on great, they have all been bed weeded now twice, and we are away to go over the Leeks and Onions a third time.

The Cabbages are looking like they are going to be huge this year, so we are going to start harvesting the summer Savoy’s next week.

We might also start harvesting our own white and Red Onions next week, The early Leeks will be ready for harvesting to, but we will leave them for now as there is so much coming on at the same time.

Last week we spent every morning weeding and harvesting the Courgettes, both are huge, the only problem with weeding the courgettes is that we can’t get in with the bed weeder, so we have to walk and pull out the weeds.

The courgette and squash plants are all planted through bio degradable mulching film, this is to prevent the weeds, but the hole that is made for planting the courgette and squash plants through, helps to grow weeds to, and with the fleece on these crops until they are almost ready to be harvested, the weeds get of to a great start.

Every year in the past we have planted two rows of courgettes in the beds, the beds are 60 inches wide and 200-meter-long, but last year again the plants grew massive and were growing over each other.

So for this year we just planted a single row in each bed, and cut the amount sown down from two thousand five hundred to one thousand five hundred, my thinking was that with the extra room for growth we would get a better crop, and it looks like it has paid off, we are struggling to keep on top of them already, and are having to throw aside the huge ones.

It might just be the season, they did get of to a great start with some really warm weather, and a good lot of rain.

So my plan for next year is to plant a single row in each bed again, and cut the seeds we sown down to one thousand, hopefully that will do, a lot does depend on the weather, but we do give them a helping hand with the mulch film and fleece, both together keeps them nice and cosy, and protected from the wind, which they hate.

With all the crops being in full growth right now we can’t get in with the brush weeder, because the brushes as they spin round damage all the leaves, this is normal at this time of the year.

So we then go through with a grubber, it’s a machine that goes on the tractor, it gets pulled along and breaks up the soil and weeds, the only problem is that we cant get really close to the plants, because it cant be steered with some one sitting on it like the brush weeder.

So the next project over the coming weeks is to make weld up a steerer and seat so we can get some one on the grubber that can steer it, then ill put on extra grubbing legs, and the theory is that we will be able to weed really close to each plant.