Week 16 planting out in the sunshine

This last week has been much like the week before with a steady high pressure system over North Wales resulting in warm sunny days and chilly nights and NO RAIN. Fortunately for us, our plot is small and we are on mains water. We also have full IBC's which I can use to top up the water buts which we use for watering the seedlings in the green house and when hardening off outside.

I told my dad that we were watering nearly daily and he was shocked given we are North Wales, but if we don't then the young plants we have been nurturing for the last couple of months will get stunted. What has been amazing though is that we have top dressed all the beds with a compost mulch and not dug it in, and the soil underneath is still damp. On older beds where we are still harvesting kale and PSB the ground is dry and cracked - we didn't put compost on last year.

This year I have put a lot more effort into hardening off plants before setting them and I've been quite amazed at how sturdy my brassicas are - the True Siberian Kale and Black Tuscan Kale are much more short and fat than last year and so haven't been flopping round as much when we've planted them. I am looking forward to seeing how this translates to yields later in the year.

Weeding:

Clearing doc leaves from the rhubarb and black berry beds and also from the PSB and Kale before we flail those. Weed pressure is not quite as great as it could be - the no dig and planty of compost seems to be working well so far.. we just have to stay on top of it.

Planting out:

4 beds of kale

1 bed of Kelvedon Peas,

1 bed of Beetroot

Still to do: 1 bed of Purple Sprouting, 1 bed of sprouts, 2 beds of Kale

Transplanting:

12 Pomodoro Tomato plants - these are going to be grown as double heads... watch this space!

Courgettes

Dill and Basil

Still to do: Transplanting corriander, parsley, cucumbers

Sowing:

Snow pea shoots

120 Kelvedon peas

60 Tall Boy Peas

120 Speedy French Beans

Radishes where we've harvested.

Mustards

Still to do: Sowing Squash, early runner beans

Harvesting:

We harvested our leaves extensively last week, so this week I've tried to give them a bit of a catch up, that said, we've still havested already!

2 kg of radishes

2 kg of Salad leaves

2 kg of Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Kale flowers.

Next week : will be a heavy harvest week again.... 240 portions planned..... Fingers crossed that we don't get a plague between then now and then!