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Welcome back to our weekly follow us! If you missed the last twenty-eight weeks, the links to them are above - and as usual - the key is at the bottom: scroll down now!
The weather this week has continued to be typically autumnal with dry sunny days, albeit with temperatures below the seasonal average. We’re still awaiting our first frost, and the weather has produced a spectacular array of autumn woodland colours!
Conditions have been dry with rainfall totalling just 2mm. Daytime temperatures have fluctuated over the course of the week from 12-130C at the beginning and end, peaking on 16.60C on Tuesday (which is above the seasonal average of 150C). The pattern has been repeated in night-time temperatures which rose from 40C at the beginning of the week to a high of 110C in the middle - slightly above the seasonal average of 100C - culminating at 60C at the week’s end. Winds have been a constant feature throughout, ranging from moderate to fresh.
Lamb’s lettuce and Land Cress have continued to grow slowly in Planter 1 and remain stuck at the two-leaf stage. While the plants could do with thinning they are too small and fiddly to prevent remaining plants suffering damage so this will have to wait. The colour and condition of plants remain good. Maintenance has mainly involved removing the leaves that threaten otherwise to suffocate the seedling (in a major omission it turns out we haven’t got a symbol for this operation!)
Spring Onion ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’ is growing well and the seedlings have reached 30mm in height, permitting a second thinning. The number of plants has been reduced to 30 which gives a nominal spacing of 20mm. This is slightly higher than the 25 per row we recommend but you invariably lose a number of plants after thinning as a result of plants lodging due to root damage caused by the upheaval of the soils in the course of thinning seedling alongside (this occurs however careful you are!) The plants are short and stocky and are likely to remain this way until the spring; they don’t require training.
Mustard ‘Red Frills’ / Mustard ‘Golden Streaks’, Mustard ‘Red Giant’, Mustard ‘Mizuna’ in Planter 3 continue to grow really strongly. While their production is less than that of the same varieties in a nearby polytunnel the quality of leaves grown outdoors is considerably better, and this applies especially to Mustard ‘Red Frills’ / Mustard ‘Golden Streaks’. While it is not unexpected that the outdoor plants of these two varieties are smaller and squatter, the leaves themselves are more gently lobed outdoors, more intense in colour (especially the Mustard ‘Red Frills’) thicker and more lustrous (I appreciate this is beginning to sound like a shampoo commercial). The taste of the outdoor grown leaves is slightly stronger but the difference is less marked than that of appearance. The differences in Mustard ‘Mizuna’ and Mustard ‘Red Giant’ are less pronounced. Production from Planter 3 continues to be sufficient for one generously filled round of sandwiches for 5 days per week. Harvesting leaves at mid-size remains our preference.
Kale ‘Emerald Ice’, Kale ‘Nero di Toscana’ (Cavolo Nero) and Kale ‘Midnight Sun’ in Planter 4 continue to grow steadily and are picked two or three times weekly, albeit only with 10-12 leaves removed on each occasion. Planting kales at close spacing, while ideal for producing kale for eating raw during the summer months, is less satisfactory for winter production as the plants are clearly competing for space. That said, planting kales for winter production would have required sowing at least 6 weeks earlier and forfeiting another crop, so it is probably an acceptable compromise. There may be an opportunity to respace the kales to perhaps 7 plants across the three rows (4,3,4) in the spring, as a means of stimulating new growth and a second round of production.