Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Sowing... More French dwarf beans, basil (really hard to grow up here so we do successional sowing and keep our fingers crossed), coriander and aubergine.

Harvesting... We are starting to 'pull' (dig up and leave with the roots showing in order that they may form a dry skin so that we can plait them) the onions (in the right bed bottom photo) and some of the garlic (which goes straight into the kitchen to be used as soon as possible) - this is really nice and strong! Coriander and salad leaves are also available and the radishes are small and very sweet. The first of the early potatoes (far middle bed in the photo below) are now ready, but we are not 'lifting' (digging out of the ground) too many of them until they get a little bigger.

Jobs... Watering, and the start of weeding. The compost does contain a bit of straw which has not rotted down, and this lies at the top of the soil keeping most of the weeds at bay. However, we still get docks, nettles and other weeds which we pull out as soon as we see them. The rips in the polytunnel still need taping up as the Gorilla tape is not sticking as well as we would like!!

Comments... We are now getting to the stage where we need to visit the polytunnel at least twice a day. The seedlings in the pots dry out very quickly, as do the seeds in the beds - watering little and often does work for these plants, but the potatoes need a lot of water just once a day to encourage growth of the tubers (potatoes) deep in the soil.

May in the polytunnel
Relaxed Farming

An emerging pumpkin shoot on the 18th April
Relaxed Farming

Just two weeks later on the 3rd May
Relaxed Farming