Early sowing

It may be a little early, but I seem to recall early spinach doing well before, so I'll start some off inside, and move to the tunnel and plant in beds as soon as they have a few leaves. Planted NewZealand spinach, giant winter and Bordeaux.

Also put in a few different tomatoes, will put more in as these progress.

planted:
Ildi, idyll, aurora, black cherry, black trifele, purple Ukraine, millefleur, and Danish export.

In organising the seeds, I find I have loads of self saved aurora, black cherry and ildi, so if you'd like me to send you some, leave me a comment.

Thanks and apologies

Thanks to all of you that are still reading the blog - I haven't been updating it nearly often enough, but I'm hoping to track the polytunnel progress - as much for myself as anything, but there's not a lot out there about tunnels as far as I can see.

And apologies to any of you who left comments in the last few months - I approved a good few this evening that were waiting a long time, sorry about the delay, I will try to be a better housekeeper in the future.

Poly tunnel

Late last year I had a big birthday. And rather than throw a party, I decided to gift myself a poly tunnel (hoop house to the yanks).

It went up In November. That's a 'bath chair' you can see in the foreground.

I had hoped to prepare all the beds over Christmas, but managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder, so I got only 20% of the way there. We are laying down weed control over the entire surface, so we need to dig up the existing raised beds, move the clay in them out of the way, lay the weed control, rebuild beds and move the dirt back.

I need to get some organic manure from the best pig farmer in the midlands, to get off to a good start on fertility. We have a few compost bins to empty also.

Spring comes early in under plastic, there's no time to waste!

You can see some really healthy Daikon at the front right of this photo - it was planted outside in August or so, and the tunnel built over it. It's doing very well. 

November foodie penal

Very late posting this, but between travel and Christmas, the time has not been right till now.

After a disappointing exchange in October, when my package never arrived, the November exchange came up trumps.
I put Sarah's package in the post early, as end of November was looking busy with some international travel. She was very happy, and the 'experimental' I made for her  flapjacks were well received.

Annie sent me an amazing package with two kinds of Lincolnshire cheese, plum bread and chocolate treats. The cheese and bread made for a wonderful midnight feast, and the artisanal chocolates went into the advent calendar, lucky boys!

The combination of the plum read and cheese was an revelation - I'll be trying that again.

The January swap has just begun, looking forward to shopping and receiving at the end of the month. If you'd like to try, click on the picture below.