Planting outdoor salad

On the fourth and fifth of April we planted salad seedlings into one third of our outdoor salad protected bed, and covered them with insect-netting. The bed had been covered with black plastic all winter, then uncoverd, dug-over, and compost added before planting. The seedlings are predominantly lettuce-family and other non-brassica salads, because these cope with increasing day-length better than brassica salads, and were sown and raised in the propagation polytunnel six weeks prior to planting out, then hardened off.

The outdoor protected salad bed covered for winter.

Betty digging out the surviving dock roots from the first third of the bed.

Ben and Ian planting salad seedlings in the prepared bed.

We hope to start harvesting salad from this outdoor bed at the beginning of May, to compensate for pulling all the bolting salad plants out of the Sausage polytunnel in order to fully plant it with this year's tomato crop.