Hi guys. This may sound odd but the end of September and the month of October feel like a mini spring to me. This may seem strange as you look out of the window at the grey skies, rain and the cold weather moving in. On the farm however we are busy getting beds ready and planting seedlings. We have a good amount of protected cropping areas (we have a couple of glasshouses and a couple of polytunnels) which will be our productive areas over winter and into the first half of spring and it is these we are getting ready in earnest. In total we have thirty-eight 20m beds to prepare and plant up before the seedlings in the trays outgrow their cells and the cold of November comes in. As I am writing this, we have twelve left to plant, so it is going well.
Last month our maintenance team finished putting the glass in our new glasshouse and we have been busy digging over the growing space and forming the beds. The plants that are to be planted there were sown at the end of august and beginning of September, so the race is on to get them in. What will we be growing under cover this winter? Pak choi, Chinese cabbage, corn salad, spring onions, lettuce, wild rocket, radishes, kale, spinaches true and perpetual, chards, spring greens, and of course our mixed beds of oriental brassica salad which include mizuna, mibuna, purple and golden frills, tatsoi, green in the snow and giant red mustard. We also have a couple of beds of garlic in our small polytunnel that will be our fresh garlic for early next year.
It will be great to get the crops in as once this happens; we can relax a bit and slow down for winter jobs. The growing year is intense, and we work a lot of overtime especially in the spring and summer. I am looking forward to fixing tools and equipment, cleaning out tool sheds and weeding the polytunnels at a more chilled pace.
Last month I was writing about harvest and getting the root crops stored away. Now the crops have been sitting in the storage containers for about a month so we need to go through the crates and sacks and remove the mouldy onions, potatoes and squashes so they don’t spread mould onto the other crops stored there. It is important to do this regularly over winter or we will find ourselves sitting on a load of mush and must throw it all away. I’d ideally like to do this every couple of weeks but in reality, we only have the time to do it once a month which will suffice.
In relation to storage crops we still have a few crop lines sitting out in the field, which is fine for now, but I have one eye fixed permanently on the weather forecast. Sometime towards the end of November the weather could turn really cold and when this happens the celeriac, beetroot and carrots will be spoiled. When I see the really cold weather on the radar (i.e. minus conditions) we will harvest everything we can and bring it inside where we will store them in wet sand to keep them going. The cabbage family stuff like kale and cabbages will be fine in all winter weather as will the parsnips which will get sweeter after a good frost. We still have more than a ton of beetroot out there so I’m hoping it sells asap!!
Speak soon.
Jude
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