We were fortunate enough to spend 3 weeks back packing round Sri Lanka in late January and early February so here`s some pictures to wet your appetite !
It was abit of a shock to come back to temperatures of zero with a wind chill of -4c and have to put up 2 polytunnels. One for sweet pea production and one mainly as a seeding tunnel which can also be used for drying garlic and onions and hopefully some winter salad crops too.
Seeding of Stocks, Achillea, Cornflower, Agastachi,Nigella and Scabious are ongoing and the winter sown sweet peas are are looking well in the polytunnel. The Larspur sown directly into the field at the beginning of September has only germinated in the bottom third of the field, for reasons that I don`t understand ! so we will now be sowing more into modules and planting out later. The Pinks are weeded, finally!! we struggled all last year to keep on top of them and have now put mypex round them which should help enormously in the future.
Vegetable seeding of Baron red onions ( into modules), celeriac, cabbage (stonehead), tomato and pimento are all complete. Broad beans will be sown directly into the ground as soon as soil temp increases a little more.
Muck has been spread on the field ready for potato planting and chisel ploughed in. Potatoes will be planted as soon as the soil warms up a little and assuming it stays dry.
The garlic is looking good and we went through it with the inter row weeder and gave it its first dose of liquid seaweed feed. This will be applied every 10-14 days from now on through till mid June..
The eschalote grise are up and away but as yet no sign of the crosnes. Both these crops are experimental so we will be very interested to see what the market thinks of them.
It feels so good to have a period of dry weather and bright days after last year. Its only been for 3 weeks but it feels as though we have already had a longer period of dry than in the whole of last year!
We are still selling Pink Fir Apple potatoes to the farm shops which remain in good order and maintain their new potato flavour even at this time of year. All the garlic is now sold as are the red onions ( or on the bonfire !!) and Penny is delighted not to be hot smoking garlic for a few months.
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