Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 14 Entries. Monday, January 6 View Page This year we have done no amendments and we will see what the soil sample says when it comes back.   Tuesday, January 14 View Page I’m going to run through all of our soil samples and try to explain how we look at plant nutrients. So the first soil sample is about normal and fairly well balanced. We have told many growers that we stopped all feeding last year around the time the pumpkins were a little bigger than the size of a beach ball. We have also made no amendments before tilling. Looking at the first recommendation some Triple super phosphate is advised. This is the only recommendation, in our eyes worth considering for our patch. The potassium is fine and both of these can be gently added later on if needed. We have always had high magnesium but it’s not the end of the world. Sulphur is just Witchcraft, we have plenty but a leaf sample would probably say that the plants short of the stuff. Boron is good but if it starts to drop we will add more. Between 4 and 6ppm is, I think the sweet spot. You certainly don’t want much less at pollination. Molybdenum really should be addressed if only just to look good. The Nitrogen is too high but we can soon flush that away if needed. If that Nitrogen was perfect at 95ppm the EC would be probably just below 2.4. Please remember that there are many ways to deal with soil fertility. The way we deal with soil amendments will not be for everyone.   Friday, January 24 View Page It’s really important to make sure that drip irrigation waters your soil correctly. By this I mean the cone effect. If you are on a clay based soil you will be able to get away with less runs. However if you’re on a sandy soil you will have to put your soaker lines much closer together. We have had to add more soaker lines which is expensive but we have to pander to our plants needs.   Friday, January 24 View Page All of the clubs have been sent two sets of our seeds and we have just 4 sets left that we are going to sell for £100 per set. It has been brought to my intention that there is someone in Eastern Europe selling our seeds and many more for inflated prices. While this is not illegal it is frustrating especially has some of the seeds apparently are not what they say they are. My recommendation is to buy them from a club auction or us.   Friday, March 14 View Page After 72 hours in our nice warm boiler room   Friday, March 14 View Page Looking good   Friday, March 14 View Page It’s looking like 100% germination   Saturday, March 29 View Page Here we go and here’s our line up. Don and Cindy kindly gave us six seeds and they are all in. Be kind to your seeds, don’t put them seed collections. We couldn’t really work out a date to sow them but it was always going to be the end of March. Normally they would be going on the back of our boiler but as it’s out of action this week they are going in my airing cupboard. It’s probably 5C cooler so germination should be a little slower. The 2020’s are white seeds with nice soft seed coats so the cotyledons push out fairly easily. The 2144’s are orange which make them a little more challenging to get going. I sanded the edges to help them push their out of their seed coatings.   Saturday, April 5 View Page I put some of our seeds on top of the boiler in my airing cupboard but didn’t realise that when someone took a shower the dam thing came on and cooked a load up our seeds. The beauty of putting seeds in tissue paper is that you can quickly react to any cock ups. This is a 2020 from the second batch seed coat removed.   Tuesday, April 8 View Page The two early plants for the Spanish are in which are the 2641 and the 2639   Tuesday, April 8 View Page This time last year the 2020 germination looked like this batch of 2641’s but for some reason their germination is poor and extremely disappointing.   Saturday, April 12 View Page A very healthy 2020 and two more that have taken four days in my airing cupboard, with a heater to germinate!!!!   Saturday, April 12 View Page 6 Barron’s looking very healthy and I will plant them tomorrow or Monday   Saturday, April 12 View Page Back ups on backups