February 25th

 As I was saying last week, we have loads of seeds in trays that have germinated, and would be needing some water, I did get the pump re located after our pump shed got flattened, and all the tunnels now have had a wee water, and the blocking tunnel that has the seed trays are all watered, panic off.

The first seeds to germinate were the Spring cabbage and Kohl Rabi, they already have four leaves and enjoying the hot temperatures that are in the tunnels at the moment, The Leek and Onion seeds, always take around a month to germinate, and each year we are always watching them wondering where are they, then all of a sudden up they pop.

In all of the other tunnels we have plants growing away, and we will be harvesting Pak Choy this week, The Tatsoi and Red Pak Choy have been eaten alive by beesties and we will need to rotovate them in, but I have ordered a new variety of mixed lettuce leaves, that we are going to try out in these tunnels, and should be direct sowing them this week all going well.

We always are weeding inside the tunnels, and I’m always trying to think of ways to make it easier, well I might have managed.

The problem is at the very start when the plants are wee its really hard to hoe them, but out in the fields when the have been planted you can go across the plants with chain harrows, these are basically chains with small thin spikes that go into the ground, they are light enough that they don’t pull out the plants, but just enough that they pull out the new growing weeds and it works a treat.

So I was staring at a Grass rake in my garage one night. This rake can be pulled out wide, or pulled back in to narrow it, and has thin metal spikes for the lawn.                                                                                          So I took it to the tunnels, to try out my plan, I started on the spring onions, at first it wasn’t heavy enough, so I tied on a 2 kilo weight, this was a wee bit better, but not good enough, so then I tied on another 1 kilo weight, better again, but still not good enough, finally I took off both weights  and tied a five kilo weight on, this was much better, and worked a treat.

I’m a wee bit late, as these plants and weeds are all established, and the ground has been rotovated for a while. But if I get in every week, right after we have planted or direct sown seeds, and work with the different weight’s, I think it will work a treat, getting the weeds just as they are thinking about coming through.

Usually to do one tunnel would take a morning, but I managed to do three in just over one hour.