29th May

It has been another week of really good warm weather.

So, we managed to get all the onions planted and the swede direct sown.

As soon as the swede was sown, we fleeced it straight away to prevent the pesky swede flee coming in and eating the seeds.

We also took the fleece of the brassicas and went through with the camera guided weeder, and to everyone’s great delight, I brought out the bed weeder.

Weeding time.

We eventually managed to get all the brassicas weeded and the fleece back on.

And with the warm weather, all the squash plants have come on.

So next week I will get the bio degradable mulch fill put down, and we will then start planting all the ten thousand squash plants, and then get the carrots sown.

Fingers crossed be the end of next week everything will be planted.

Then it will just be harvesting, harvesting, harvesting and weeding, weeding, weeding,

We had planted two hundred and fifty courgettes in a tunnel, the plan was to give us an early courgette harvest, and it seems to have worked well, there are flowers on the courgettes, and we should be harvesting our own courgettes in a couple of weeks, pretty good considering, we have not planted the field ones yet.

In the tunnels this week, we had harvested out of three tunnels, so straight away, I got them rotovated, and then rolled.

In one tunnel I direct sowed spinach and Rhubi chard.

In another direct sowed more salad mix.

And in the big cosy tunnel we direct sowed French and flat beans, I had ordered French beans and runner beans for them.

This will give them a rest, and put well needed nitrogen back into the soil, and giving us a nice sweet crop.

I had put broad beans in two of the smaller tunnels at the end of last year, and they put nitrogen back in to, and after harvesting we rotovated the bean stalks in,

and it has made a huge difference to the salad crop, that we planted in after them.

At the end of the summer, I will plant broad beans in the three tunnels that hasn’t had beans in them, and that will be all the tunnels had a legume crop.

We will continue doing this every year.