30th January

Last week we starting blocking seeds.

We have started a bit earlier than usual this year, and have already blocked ten thousand red spring onions, five thousand kohl rabi and five thousand spring cabbage.

I decided to start about a month earlier than usual, hopefully reducing the amount we will need to buy in over the lean months, I think the prices will be a wee bit higher than usual.

If it goes mild and stays mild it will work fantastic, but if I turns cold which it often does at the end of February, the plants will just sit there with no growth, so the early start will come to nothing.

The spring cabbage we put in the heated Greenhouse, the small heater in here keeps the greenhouse at 16 degrees, and the spring cabbage seeds have chitted and all through.

This week we will put the spring cabbage into the small tunnel where the spring onions and kohl rabi are, and move the kohl rabi into the greenhouse to get them shooting on.

Last week I also ordered two varieties of lettuce and oriental salad mix, when the lettuce arrives we will get these blocked of, and hopefully get these planted and the oriental salad mix direct sown by the first of March.

In the next couple of weeks we will get a start on blocking the thousands of seeds we have in.

We will make a start as usual with the early leeks which is one hundred thousand, and the onions one hundred and fifty thousand.

Then it will be a constant job for a few weeks with around six hundred thousand seeds going through the machine.

These plants eventually get planted out in the field with the planning machine where there will be three people on the back dropping plants down holes that turn round and the machine plants them in the soil.