Week 14 and 15 Hardening off and harvesting leaves

The last couple of weeks have seen some very low temperatures over night, with some quite thick ice forming in our water troughs, and actually many of the days it barely got above freezing especially with the wind chill.

Over the last couple of months our brassicas and onions have been steadily growing in their root trainers, and were starting to outgrow them so two weeks ago, we started taking them outside everyday first thing and then putting them away in the greenhouse over night. They've been battered by hale, snow, winds, rain and sunshine, at first they looked quite bedraggled as I put them away at night and I was quite worried, but now they look fantastic and have taken the plunge planting them out in the field. Check out the picture above!

The rest of this week I'll be planting out True Siberian Kale, Black Tuscany Kale, both of which we hope to be harvesting in a couple of months, whereas the Brussel Sprouts and Purple Sprouting Brocolli are going in for harvest at Christmas and this time next year!! What could possible go wrong between now and then!?

We've also planted out our onions which we've grown from seed and a bed of lettuces for outside. we'll probably get one more crop of lettuces inside before we get the tomatoes in. The tomatoes will be potted on this week... I need to keep them growing whilst we are still harvesting Chard and Lettuces which are well established in the beds which will be tomatoes in about a month's time!

Harvesting.

UK veg is especially hard to get at the moment, and what we can get is either old roots, leeks or expensive, so I am especially excited to be harvesting in the quantities that we are:

Week 14:

30 portions of Chard - 8kg

60 portions of salad leaves - 9kg

10 portions of Purple Sprouting Brocolli - 1.5kg

10 portions of radishes

Week 15:

48 portions of Chard - 14kg

32 portions of radishes

7.5 kg of salad leaves

2 kg of Kale

4 kg of Kale Flowers

800g of Purple Sprouting Brocolli

5 kg of mixed salad - Rocket, Mibuna, Mizuna, Golden Streaks, Ruby Streaks

1 kg of spinnach

There has been some great learning this year too. If you've been following out progress you may recall we had a bed of green manure in the polytunnel... well next year that is going to be more of rocket, mibuna, mizuna type stuff, fresh leaves are exciting