Spring watch at Hopesay

Sure sign that spring is well on its way, a broad bean emerging, sown this year in Feb will provide a crop in that difficult period May and June known as the hungry gap These lettuce were overwintered as small 4 leaf seedlings are now starting to put on a bit of growth. You can just see to the right the remains of another lettuce crop. These were planted earlier and as a result wintered as more mature plants. They were decimated by Downy Mildew which hardly touched the seedlings growing in the next bed.
The lesson from this would appear to be plant earlier so plants are harvested before winter or plant late to winter as seedlings



For the first time this year we wintered spinach in the tunnel to get an early spring crop. So far it seems to have worked, I took my first cut this past week and it is showing strong growth so we will get more crops before the summer plants are available.
The seed trays are onions which were germinated in our growing room under artificial lights for 2 weeks before being stood out in the unheated tunnel.