- [Charles] Polytunnel 22nd of May.
It's been a very busy couple of weeks in here
because we've gone from the winter vegetables,
in my case salads, greens, leafy things.
To the summer plantings which is mostly
fruit and crops here.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, some basil as well which is used
for the solar bags and a few fancy things like overshoes.
All of those plants are not a harm by frost
so they need warmth to grow.
And I wanna show you a bit about the timing
of the transplanting cause that is so,
it's so easy to make a mistake on it.
If you're aware of all the parameters
that can help you to get a smoother transition
like for example if we look at this tomato plant here,
and this tomato plant in the ground,
these two plants were sown at the same time.
Roughly the middle of March up to the 20th
that's my favorite sowing time.
And this one has been sitting in a pot
that one's been in the ground for two weeks.
And that's the difference.
So if you can time your sowings so that your plants
are not hanging around in a pot too long.
And get them in the ground as soon as the ground is ready
and as soon as conditions allow.
That's the tricky bit because with these have had a frosty
night in here, actually but we had fleece over
and we took the strings down put fleece over.
And that enabled them to survive the frost.
Tomatoes are reasonably hardly set over fleece.
So that's nice result.
And then one of the things about watering new plantings is,
to water say especially when they're quite big, you know,
there's a big root system on top that, plant like that.
So water every day for five or six days
until they're well established
and then you can reduce the watering regime somewhat.
Since we're here I'm gonna mention
these French beans as well.
And I've been getting comments and questions
about leaf damage like that.
I think that's cold, notice it's the sort of intermediate
range when we had that very cold night in here.
They did again have fleece over,
over a few cold nights actually.
They don't like cold, bush beans, French beans,
runner beans as well as been damaged by frost
they really need warmth.
But I'm not worried about that because I'm what I'm looking
at here is the new growth is so strong and healthy.
That tells me the plant is fine and going good.
And then cucumbers.
It's the same story.
And the same sorts of tomato.
I didn't mention the color change,
but it's very apparent in the cucumber.
How this one is quite pale now, going yellow.
That's all it is, lack of nutrients in the compost
you know, cucumbers are fast growing.
So I sowed this cucumber and that cucumber on the same day
15th of April.
Not much more than a month ago, five weeks.
And this one went in the ground one week ago exactly
and it was the same as that.
Well, it was smaller than that obviously.
This one has grown since but it's running out of nutrients.
And again, it's the same story.
This one is really poised to grow fast.
Now cucumbers need more warmth than tomatoes.
So that's why I sowed them later
and transplant them a little bit later as well.
In our case 15th of May or 16th,
just after the last frost day
then on the last frost day.
Is a good time and it usually warms up pretty fast
after that it has been warming up now.
And again, same story with watering
we've been washing everyday.
Cucumbers are because they grow so fast.
They need more water than tomatoes actually
in my experience, you really don't wanna let them get dry
or they'll crisp up at the top.
So.
The garlic here, that was a companion plant if you like
and a free crop while we had salad
and that's coming close to harvest now
in about three weeks time.
That will be harvesting and then that leaves room
for the summer crops to grow.
One more aspect of the summer crops is,
in the watering is how you look after the soil.
And this is no dig.
No dig by the way does mean
that you can make a hole to plant.
I just literally cut a hole
like that to pop in a plant like this.
I'm not making a big excavation of a large hole.
But beyond that, all we've done is matched the surface
with compost, summer compost mostly about one inch
just over three centimeters.
And then this year just for trial
I was actually given some seaweed from a local beach.
So I'll try that as a mulch along a row of tomatoes.
And then I thought hang on.
Let's try a comparison mulch as well.
So that's miscanthus grass, which is one year old actually
but it was not very wet so it hasn't decomposed much.
So it's just to compare how much water
we need to do on both sides how the tomatoes grow.
And mulching is quite a practice in the summer.
I'm always saying got to be careful of slugs,
but in here actually it's not really consideration
because we can keep the surface
or we can control the watering and not let it get too wet.
Just water where we need.
And so slugs are not a problem.
And I think it will be interesting
to see what happens with this.
Now just one thing about the seaweed is, all the plastic,
I keep finding bits of plastic in here.
And it's a illustration of what's happening in the oceans
and so that needs regular removal as well.