Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

As we move ever forward in the gardeners' year we are faced with problems due to heat and humidity. The very warm (50.6°C today) and damp conditions in the polytunnel are ideal not only for the plants we want, but also the weeds (a weed is just a plant that is not in the place it should be!), moulds, fungi, snails and slugs. Our resident frog takes care of some of the gastropods (snails and slugs) but there are so many that we have to resort to more drastic measures - picking them out (a slimy job...) as well as slug pellets. We water the plants in the mornings as slugs are nocturnal and like damp conditions - after the heat of the day the very dry top layer of partially rotted straw in the polytunnel causes problems for slugs, but does not deter them completely.
The photos below show some of our brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc) - we planted these quite thickly on the 13th April, and are now 'thinning' them out. The big clump of plants (left hand photo) taken from the 'thinnings' bed is gently teased apart, keeping as much soil as possible on the roots, and then each individual plant is thoroughly watered in (right hand photo). For a few days after transplanting the individual plants look awful, but they do recover and with the extra space they now have, will grow into large plants ideal for eating in the late autumn. We plant these crops at a distance of about 30cm apart but leave some of the thinnings in the original bed for 'pick and leave' harvesting in September/October ('pick and leave' is where you pick some of the plant to eat but leave the rest to carry on growing, this works particularly well for such plants as cabbage, curly kale and greens).