5th July

 That’s the courgette harvesting started ; this job makes it really feel like summer has arrived.

This week we are going to take all the fleece of off the brassicas again, brush weed them and start bed weeding.

We have already had the fleece of off theses crops a couple of weeks ago, and been through with the brush weeder.

Usually after the first brush weed, we can leave the fleece of, as the weeds are as tall as the plants and the pigeons don’t bother the plants, but after the second brush weed and bed weed, we then cover the crop with net.

But this year there seems to be more pigeons than usual and they seem to be hungrier, and after the first brush weed, they came straight in and started munching away.

Luckily under the fleece the plants have recovered and are looking braw.

Another job that we eventually got done last week was planting the cucumber plants.

The reason we have been holding of planting them, is that I have been waiting for four weeks for slug gone pellets to arrive.

Another part of our wildlife that love to eat all my plants are the pesky slugs.

A few years ago I lost a whole tunnel of cucumbers to slugs.

The slug gone pellets are not poison they are sheep wool made into pellets, they also slow-release nitrogen, and the slugs hate crawling over it so they keep away from the plants.

But this year with covid deliveries it’s been a nightmare.

But one question I have never had an answer to is.

Where do all the slugs come from ????. there were no visible signs of a slugs anywhere, in the tunnel we are using for the cucumbers.

But the minute we put down the terminate, and plant the cucumbers thousands arrive, and my second question is where on earth do the frogs come from, they arrive behind the slugs ???? any answers, I mean Frogs ??? we have no burns any where near us, and again there are no frogs in any tunnel at any time of the year until I plant the cucumbers.

But I need more frogs because the slugs outnumber the frogs.

I always tell new workers every year, as we are planting the cucumbers, you wait till next week there will be loads of frogs in here, well they look at me like I have two heads, which I think they do most of the time anyway.

Until next week arrives, and I send them into the cucumber/frog tunnel