People have also often asked me what varieties do we use ourselves. For squash we’ve planted Kuri, Blue Ballet, winter butternut, sweet lightning and delicata. These last two were our best sellers last year. [...]
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We’ve just planted out some leeks in the glasshouse. As commercial growers we need to make sure that the spacing is right so as to deliver the optimum yield and make the plants easy to weed. We use a bamboo grid to plant them at approx 13cm centres which means we can use the 8cm small wolf tools – hoes, rakes etc to keep the plants clean. [...] As gardeners we are always trying to bend the rules a bit. One tip is to warm the soil up a bit with fleece, cloches or polytunnels. Another is to start the seedlings off in a protected environment and then planting them out later. [...] These leafy vegetables really cross over between annual and the perennial approach to gardening beloved by permaculturalists. As long as you keep picking them they remain vegetative – sorrel does that too and its a really useful thing for intelligent gardening. [...] We start off with the netting on the ground and plant out the bean seedlings through the holes. This year at the urging of our work experience intern from Kenya, the guys have gone back to a tighter spacing as I originally used. This means that this year the beans are about 30 cm apart in rows with about 20 cm spacing between rows (the plants being staggered so that they have a bit of space [...] The two crops which without question have won the “lets defy the winter” award are winter purslane which has been the backbone of the salad crops (along with the Mizuna) and Pak Choi which has been doing famously. This is really a winter crop as in short days it bolts as soon as it gets to maturity. However at this time of the year the light levels are low enough to keep it vegetative. And Tasty! [...] We had a round up on 30th December when 4 of us walked round our glasshouses and discussed the lessons of the year on video. This has been issued as a DVD to all the people who work in the glasshouses so that what we’ve found out can be retained and shared to build the knowledge base of the company. Here are the top 6 lessons in no particular order [...] However most exciting to us is that you can now buy fresh produce from our glasshouses on line via a new page on our Fletching Glasshouses site. This means you can get an organic vegetables home delivery service for salad leaves, stirfy and chillis picked the same day that they are shipped. [...] There are 11 Hectares of tomatoes under 1 massive venlo glass structure. The tomatoes are grown in rockwool (hydroponically) and they grow alternate blocks on inner wires and outer wires. They grow about 11 varieties specified by the supermarkets and each plant consists of 2 vines grafted onto a rootstock. [...] The nematodes arrive as a paste which is mixed with water. For soil pests you apply around the roots of your plants using a hose feeder or a watering can. There is enough in each pack to cover 60 square metres. Water it into the moist soil from April to July and the nematodes will attack all those near-invisible pests which like to nibble at plant roots. [...] |
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