29th January

Last weeks deliveries were a wee bit easier than two weeks ago, two weeks ago we would have been better using snowmobiles, Friday was the worst but luckily we got everyone delivered.
At the start of last week we had strong winds and heavy rain, this is when we start tunnel watching for any damage fortunately the winds weren't that strong and everything is ok by Thursday it was draw and dry and pretty warm, and the tunnels started to heat up which will help give the plants a burst of life, if you remember from previous news letters we have one tunnel with five thousand spring cabbage, one with five thousand purple sprouting broccoli, this is a wee trial, and one tunnel with then thousand five hundred broad beans again this is a trail, and inside the wee hot box tunnel we have five thousand Pak Choi which we still have to plant they are looking pretty good and I gave them a wee feed of seeweed on Monday, they look like they will be ready to plant in a couple of weeks.
Last week I ordered the start of the seasons seeds for blocking, i'm a wee bit later than usual in ordering them but the weather has been pretty cold so it was better holding of.
Through the season we order around 1 million seeds, around 400 thousand of these seeds are direct sown straight into the field, the rest we put through our seeder machine and these all go into trays which we then move into the tunnels to bring on for planting in the field, that is all done by hand.
The first of the seeds will be arriving this week these are.
5 thousand spring cabbage, 5 thousand celery, 5 thousand lettuce, 20 thousand early leeks, 60 thousand mid season leeks, 60 thousand late leeks, 50 thousand onions and 50 thousand red onions and last for this order five thousand Kohl Rabi,ki a nice wee start, I will be ordering seeds right up till April. From mid February to the end of March is when we will be doing the most of the varieties ans the bulk of the seeds, the quiet winter months are almost over.