Veg4Show

All my onions in the pots have been hardening off inside the tunnel now for 2 weeks and at the weekend got planted into the beds. I am using under soil seep hoses so I can keep the top surface as dry as I like.

My Peter Clarke leeks are still small, as stated I got these in late February and have been growing them on in natural day light.

Few pictures of where my parsnip and carrots are at:
(sorry pictures taken late evening).

Remember to watch out for aphids, I would say "at this time of year" but that doesnt apply to me as Ive had them all year.

No picture but I'm very impressed with my sweet candle stump carrots, Every seed germinated except one station and to be honest I reckon I forgot to sow that one. The blue casing that aids germination really has done the trick, well done Medwyn.

Good news all my stump carrots have come up, except 20 on the far side that I sowed 3 days later as I ran out of mix, hopefully they will also be up in a few days time.

I have now replaced the poythene sheet with fleece, I also have thrown a few slug pellets down as I found the odd snail about.

The only slight bad news is; the one long carrot pipe that did not germinate has still not come up, so I have re sown that one. Also one station had some poor looking carrot in it, so I also had to re-sow that one.

All in all its about time my carrots actually got off to a good start and I'm pretty happy that they will now be good speciems.

My first 20 cauliflowers were sown today, 10 concept and 10 Dok Elgon. I will continue to sow 10 of each for the next month or so. I grew Dok Elgon 3 years ago and it was the best cauliflower I had ever grown producing large tight heads, massive leaves and was a fast grower even in poor ground. For some reason I have never been able to get hold of it again but I managed to get it this year, not 100% if its the same or a modified version, will soon find out.

Been busy sorting out my onions in the hope I will put them inside the tunnel to harden off end of April start of may. I like to leave mine inside the greenhouse with a minium night temperature of 50f, this time of year it's easy to maintain 60f. I will move them inside the tunnel and leave them in the pots for at least 2 weeks before I plant them in the beds. I have to say they are looking great, even tho I always worry about my onions they are probably the best I have had for some years growing on normal daylight.

The beds inside the tunnel are complete but the soil test was not great. I really have left it late to get them up to scratch and have no choice but to adjust the nutrient levels with just fertilizers, adding manure after the onions come off will improve it for next year. Always remember to do a soil conductivity test if you are adding manure to beds if you are growing inside, you will probably find it is very high if you have manured every year, a common mistake.

Picture update here soon.

More good news, all my carrot stations inside are up except one, Finally it looks like my long carrots will get off to a good start this year.

Had another 90 tons of manure delivered this weekend, kinda hoping the tractor parts turn up this week so I can get it shifted about.