Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Sowing...Our early potatoes (Accent) and main crop (Golden Wonder) are now in their beds of compost from the heap - if you look carefully you can see the green shoots on the seed potatoes (right hand top photo). We plant our potatoes quite deep so that we do not need to 'earth up' as much as we might. The compost has retained a lot of moisture so we should not need to water these much over the coming months. We have also popped four seed potatoes in the black dustbin - these should give us very early new potatoes.

Harvesting... Parsnips, brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower, purple sprouting broccoli) and leeks are still the only things left in the polytunnel at this time of year, and some of these are even tougher so the goats still get regular treats!!

Jobs... A big tidy up, making sure that any old plant material (leaves, stalks, etc) are removed as these are ideal hiding places for slugs and other nasties. All the tools are washed and, where necessary (shears, secateurs etc) oiled. Pea sticks and bamboo are all washed in Jeyes fluid to kill off fungus and mould, they are then left to dry in one of the workshops.

Comments... Another cold and wet month, the soil and compost in the polytunnel is not warming up, even though we have the occasional warm and sunny day. For many seeds this means that instead of shooting they might rot: patience is a virtue!

February in the polytunnel
Relaxed Farming

Planting the seed potatoes
Relaxed Farming

Purple sprouting broccoli
Relaxed Farming