
Having started last Thursday by planting my summer cabbages, I wanted to plant the rest of the brassica plants I had nurtured in the greenhouse at home. They had spent the last week hardening off in the grow-house and were ready to brave the Roeshot weather.
I started with the dwarf curly kale plants given to me by my neighbour. They crop right through the winter so needed to go in the second, left hand, brassica tunnel that next year I will move on to its new patch after the other one. I had so many plants I could plant a whole row, in the spaces I had mistakenly started preparing on my last visit. Scrape patch in mulch, cut out hole with bulb planter, lime, stir in lime at bottom of hole, and finally plant out of the 9cm. pots. Ten plants in a row down one side of the tunnel, out of the way during the summer.
I then moved through to the other tunnel to plant the crops that will mature in the autumn or early winter. Cauliflower and Savoys down the side away from the summer cabbages and a row of Brussels Sprouts down the middle leaving space for autumn cauliflowers and similar crops either side.
Having watered everything, including the seeds, and sprinkled some slug bait, I covered the carrots and neighbouring parsnips with fleece tunnels against carrot fly. Normally I don't bother covering parsnips but carrot fly will attack them, especially if they are attracted by the next door carrots.
That done I harvested some purple sprouting, some leeks that were going to seed and a cabbage before going home.