6th April

I hope that everyone had a lovely Easter. We can now look forward to some sunny weather!

This week we have cauliflower, spinach, salad onions, rainbow chard and 3 mixes of microgreens available.

The spinach and chard are both growing vigorously, and are proving to be great "cut and come again" crops.

Healthy looking spinach, and colourful chard!

It's getting very busy both in the greenhouse, and on the field.

The last of the tomatoes have been sown this week, along with cucumbers, runner beans and dwarf french beans. I have pricked out both purple sprouting and green sprouting broccoli, along with kale and cavolo nero.

I take the seed tray full of seedlings

Then carefully extract them

And transfer to a new tray where they can spread their leaves!

These red kale have already started to develop numerous leaves, and are looking very promising

One of the issues I have at the minute is finding enough space in the greenhouse and nursery polytunnel, especially as I couldn't resist a sideline into baskets and tubs. More about that in a later blog

I'm having to move seedlings from the nursery tunnel at home to the main polytunnel over the field on a regular basis. I had a realisation that I have been spending too long working on these seedlings when I was imagining the excitement amongst them knowing they were being promoted to the big tunnel!

Dave, they are seedlings and they aren't dancing around, it is windy!

On the subject of space, I have a detailed plan that I follow which will use every single bed (we have 58). So I know how much is allocated to each vegetable, and using the recommended spacing for each vegetable I have worked out the number of each plant that will be in each bed

I have to allow for losses along the way, so for example, if I want 50 plants, I will sow 100 seeds. Chances are that 70% will germinate, and then I will only take the strongest 50 of the 70 seedlings.

Because I buy such good seeds (Tamar Organics mainly) it is often the case that the germination rate is high so I end up with spares. It is very difficult to resist the temptation to try and keep all the seedlings but there simply won't be room for them. Pricking out the cavolo nero, this lot ended up as compost:

But that's better than waiting for the transplant stage and then putting things on the compost heap after they have taken up space and energy in the greenhouse

Planted out lettuce and more radish this week

And had a new kitchen installed in the packing shed

Plan for this week is potato heavy with more of the Charlotte and Colleen first earlies going in, along with the first plantings of both early and main maincrops. Unfortunately something has found and had a meal out of a couple of the earlier plantings. Pheasants are odds on, but I can't have netting over everything!

Enjoy the sunshine!