2nd March

That’s the blocking season under way, for those that don’t know what that is.

We start almost all of our vegetables from seed, we sow the seeds into trays, we have two machines to help with this, one is a tray filler that we load up with compost which fills the trays, then the filled tray goes onto another machine, in this machine, we have the seeds that are about to be sown, there are 9 nozzles that sit above the seed tray, and as the tray goes below the seed tray, the nozzles suck up a single seed then drop the seed into each cell, the machine works of off a compressor, this is how we get the air. Each tray has 144 cells.                                                                                                                                                                                         These trays after they are full of seeds are then placed in a sixty-meter-long tunnel, then we water and feed them with seaweed, until they are big enough to plant out in the field.

We use three different tunnels for bringing on different seeds.

The main blocking Tunnel is 60 meters long.

But we also have a much smaller tunnel which is only 20 meters long, this tunnel heats up much quicker and keeps warmer,                                                                                                                                                          And we also have a greenhouse with a heater in it, and in here we can keep the temperature to a controlled temperature for any seeds that like the heat.  

All the seeds need different temperatures before they will germinate, so we do need to use the three tunnels.

Last week we blocked two thousand five hundred Kohl Rabi, and four Thousand Spring Cabbage.

The Kohl rabi is in the greenhouse, and the Spring cabbage is in the 20-meter tunnel.

This week we are going to block two thousand five hundred Chinese Cabbage, and 50 chillies, both will be going in the greenhouse. And we will also be blocking twenty thousand red onions and make a start on the fifty thousand white onions, these will be going into the big sixty-meter tunnel.

Every at this time of the year week we will be blocking seeds, we be bringing on around five hundred thousand seeds with the blocking machine.

And we will direct sow around the same amount of seeds in the field.

Seeds like Potatoes, Carrots, Parsnips, Beetroot and Neaps don’t need to be brought on in the tunnel, they can be sown direct into the field in May.