We've had mostly dry weather, with some sun and lots of wind during May and the start of June. We've been able to (just about) catch up on transplanting and weeding, as well as a good amount of mowing, ploughing and cultivating. Not bad considering our main tractor was out of action for a while, and then the replacement tractor broke down too!
There is still some moisture in the ground so the new potatoes, onions and garlic are growing OK so far, and some of the recent transplanting has needed irrigating with trickle tape to give them a good start. The courgettes were planted about 2 weeks ago so it will be a few weeks before the first harvest of these. We've planted our first patch of leeks, and the transplanter we use for this releases a cupful of water with each plant and hopefully that will be enough to get them established. We are harvesting small amounts from our early plantings of spinach, chard and kale, the next blocks have been planted and the later blocks have just been sown into module trays. Martin sows salad every 2/3 weeks throughout the summer and we plant out lettuce at similar intervals to keep continuity of our salad bags.
We've had our usual battles with slugs, snails, flea beetle, rooks, pigeons and rabbits, with some beds of winter brassicas being attacked by slugs, snails and flea beetle at the same time when the weather changed from wet to dry!
We started the supplementary feeding for turtle doves at the end of May and are very happy to report that we have pictures on the trail camera of 2 turtle doves feeding on the seed. This is our third year of doing this with the seed provided by the RSPB.
Pictures from the trail camera are here https://www.ripplefarmorganics.co.uk/blog/2023/06/april-and-may-pictures-from-the-trail-camera
