3rd June

Bellfield stories at this time of the year always start off with the weather of the week.

Most of our work at this time of the year, is revolved around field work.

If it is to wet then we get into the tunnels, plenty of weeding needing constantly done in there.

And there is always a bed that has been harvested, needing rotovated and re planted.

And there are the cucumbers, they are always needing tied up and the side shoots cut off.

But the plan for the week was to plant the last sixty trays of leeks.

Then get the bio degradable milch film laid, and plant the squash plants.                               We did get a lot of nice hot weather last week, but we also got some thunder and lightning with heavy downpours of rain.

I did get the leeks planted but it was a struggle and involved a lot of setting the planting machine up so it could work in the almost dry soil.

So, then it was onto laying the mulch film, but on Wednesday night there was a huge downpour of rain.

I am writing this newsletter on Sunday and 6pm, and I am going back to try and see if the ground is dry enough to get the mulch film put down.

That just shows how much rain fell in a couple of hrs on Wednesday night, because from then to now we have not had a drop of rain and it has been over 20 degrees every day.

And the ground has still been too wet.

I did try and put on bed of mulch film down on Saturday after the farmers market, but it was too wet, and again I tried Sunday morning almost there but still too wet.

So, fingers crossed I get it all down tonight, and we can get the squash plants planted.

Then it is onto the weeding machine and then bed weeding, again it has been to wet to get in the field with the weeding machine.

So, this week we have been in the tunnels all week.

The cucumbers are not far away from starting to produce, they are loving the heat.

And we had to rotovate out another couple of beds that were finished and re planted with two varieties of lettuce and some oriental mix for the salad bags.

We re planted some more Ruby chard, and planted two hundred tomato plants.

So, the tunnels are all ship shape and looking good.

Just need a proper spell of sustained dry weather and we can get the fields looking the same.