Worm's Eye View of Potatoes

This is one of the potato fields that Cobrey Farms rents from us. The field was planted in mid April and the potatoes emerged a couple of weeks ago. With the dry weather Henry Chinn has asked us to start irrigating the potatoes. they receive about 25mm of 'rain' each time we irrigate. the bare area in the middle of this field is where we spotted a lapwing nest when we were cultivating the field. In order not to disturb the nest we cultivated and subsequently planted around the nest. unfortunately the nest was predated after the field was planted. At the start there were 3 eggs in the nest but they soon disappeared leaving no trace.

This is a shot down between the potato rows showing how the plants grow and develop. Wit the warm water and adequate water they will very soon reach to meet across the rows. They need lots of water so that the skins of each potato are blemish free. This means that they will look more desirable to the customer when packed in clear plastic for the supermarket shelf. If these skins are good when harvested in August, Henry will pack them into 1 tonne boxes and put them into storage where they will stay untill Christmas (I expect). To find out more about Cobrey Farms you can visit their web on www.cobrey.co.uk

Planting Time

Last week saw the start of the potatoes planting here at on the farm. We let Henry Chinn from Ross-on-Wye use some of our fields to grow his potatoes on. This year fields Aerodrome and Pastures are being used by Henry and they will be irrigated from our re-vamped reservoir and newly laid underground mains. http://www.cobrey.co.uk will tell you all about Henry's farm, where it is, what he grows and more importantly where you can buy it from! This machine is a bed tiller and cultivates the ridges of soil before they are de-stoned, (who likes mis-shaped potatoes these days). They are finally planted. They will take about 4 weeks to emerge when the rows will look something like this...........................................

Not only are potatoes being planted but spring barley has been drilled and our wheat and Oilseed Rape crops have been fertilised (plant food).

Lambing is well underway with about 430 left to lamb. I hope there will be some for the lambing day on the 15th April when over 250 people have booked to come and see what we do!