7th October

 We are into October already, that has been a fast year, although I do think I say that every year.

And it’s coming to Pumpkin time again,  last week I was walking through the Pumpkin crop, trying to see the Pumpkins in amongst all the plant growth.

The Pumpkins plants have grown massive, like all the squash plants have done this year.

So it is pretty hard to see how many actual Pumpkins we might have.

Usually at this time of the year, all of the foliage has died off, and we are left with a field of Pumpkins everywhere.

This then means we can have an idea of how many we might have, taking into account that we will have some rotten ones.

But this year like what we have experienced with the squash plants, it looks like we won’t have a huge crop in numbers, but what is there are some very large Pumpkins.

But it is impossible to even estimate what numbers we might have, as I can see them.

Last week we did have frost in the morning for a couple of days, this usually kills if the Pumpkin leaves, so hopefully we will get a better look at what the crop is looking like.

This year has been a year of massive veg, the white onions have grown, bigger than I have ever seen, and this means that we aren’t lifting as many rows as we would normally be lifting.

So to save us losing the onions to the frost and the wet weather, we are going to start lifting them all and store them in the blocking tunnel.

In here it will be nice and dry and away from the frost.

We have ten, two hundred-meter rows to lift, and we have been getting on average fifty thirty kilo crates, of white onions per row, and around twenty red onions per row.

There are six rows of white onions to lift and four of red, so we are looking at lifting around eleven and a half tonnes of onions, over the next two weeks, all by hand, at a very rough count, that is around sixteen thousand onions, all lifted and dressed by hand, one by one.

It’s been a different year this year for growing, onions and leeks are the same family, and the leeks are pretty good this year, but with the onion growth and quality, I would have thought the leeks would be the same.

But the Leeks have been bigger and greener, in years before when we have had very little rain, this year they are pretty good, and fairly big, but they aren’t as dark green as they would normally be.

Every year is a learning curve, and all we can do is plan for the following year sow the seeds, try out some new ones, then see if mother nature lets us grow them.