It is the topic of every conversation at the moment, the weather is truly wonderful. I will just temper that with a slight comment, is this usual for March, is the climate changing? Are we seeing a shift to more extremes at times we wouldn’t expect, you can draw your own conclusions. So back to business.

It is fantastic and allowing us to get loads done we transplanted the first lettuce last week and…… are sowing outdoors salad, parsnip, early potatoes, and loads of other stuff this week. Last year we were lured into a sense of summer in early spring and as usual jumped at the chance however we paid the price later with the cold biting wind that hit us in May, we will be guarding against that this year and everything will be covered with fleece.

Galway Food Festival We will be at the Galway food festival over the bank holiday weekend so please come along and visit our stand. I have also been invited to give a talk on Saturday 7th April at 3pm in the Green Room Galway city Museum.

Farm News  We are harvesting a monster load of veg from the tunnels, from scallions to salad, to radish and the first fresh spinach. Field work is on going and we will be out in the transplanter this week, pictures to follow next week, so keep an eye out for them.

Watch out for the wild garlic in your boxes over the next week or two!

                                  Fresh radish from the farm

                                    A cute country dog!

                                  Fresh parsley from the farm

                 edible flowers from winter purslane, lovely salad!

Gardening tip: Yes it is time to get sowing and even transplanting outdoors, however it is easy for the weather to change and those lovely fragile seedlings can get hit and destroyed by the harsh elements. So by all means continue with the transplanting and sowing, but be ready for a change in the weather and when it does come have a fleece on hand. We tend to cover all early transplantings with fleece, especially brassicas. There are several reasons for this. Reason one is the birds, and in particular pigeons, they love the first tender shoots of the brassicas, and will decimate a 1000 plants in no time(Talking from experience here!). Fleece also offers protection from frost and a variety of insects that like to take up home in your lovely veg.  So tip of the week, buy fleece and use it!