Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

We really are now nearing the end of the vegetables in the polytunnel! The three photos below show what we have left, namely sprouts, greens and leeks. Unfortunately we will have a few weeks when we will have to resort to eating just frozen peas and (shock horror) buying in a few vegetables at our local shop!! Our onions and potatoes have now run out so we are already buying in these two!! Despite storing our potatoes in dry paper sacks, the damp weather did get to some of them and the last few went rotten and so had to be thrown out.
Looking forward however, we expect to be eating asparagus, salads, mini carrots and hopefully some early greens by the end of April and the first new potatoes by the end of May. The polytunnel has been fabulously warm during the day with the recent good weather but the nights here are still cold (we are 1000 feet above sea level) and so the soil is not getting the constant warmth it needs. If we touch the top of the soil with our hands it feels lovely and warm but if we then dig down a couple of centimetres it is still quite cold. We need the temperatures to rise at night so the warmth from both the day AND night will really start to get deep down in the soil.
When a plant grows, it is the root that grows first so both water AND warmth are needed to help the root grow providing a good support for the shoots (and in our polytunnel, the resulting vegetables).