Winter gardening

Things always quieten down for me towards the end of August. My customers have gardens bursting with produce ready to be harvested and any empty spaces have been filled with veg that will over winter such as leeks, brassicas and parsnips. After all produce has been harvested I recommend sowing green manures which will cover the soil and add nutrients come the spring. This quieter time comes as a relief after the busy spring and summer months and I take the opportunity to have some time off and sometimes go away. This year I went to Cornwall and then to the other end of Britain and the Isle of Colonsay. In Cornwall I visited The Eden Project and below is a photo of their colour coordinated veg garden which sits right along side their bakery/cafe:

I stayed with friends on the Isle of Colonsay and they proudly showed me their veg garden. It’s astonishing that their veg has grown so well – in the photo below you can see that the Atlantic sea is about two hundred metres away with no wind break between. The wind is their biggest difficulty with veg growing but the judicious use of glass bottles (plenty of large whiskey bottles collected from the island’s bar) to make raised beds with a protective edge around them and plastic bottles used as cloches means that the soil warms up well in the sunshine and young plants are protected from the wind as they start growing. Fertilizer is collected in the form of sheep droppings from surrounding fields and barrowing loads of seaweed from the beach edge.

Back in Norfolk I’ve been making raised beds, putting up a large polytunnel, and doing winter pruning on fruit trees along with giving my customer’s gardens a good clear up so that I’m all ready to start again in just a few weeks time with seed sowing. I’ll be making my seed orders to Tamar Organics, The Real Seed Catalogue, the Organic Gardening Catalogue, and Suffolk Herbs soon – if there are any organic veg, herb or fruit plants that you would particularly like to see on the market stall please let me know and I’ll do my best to source them.

Sandringham Flower Show 2011

A great day was had by all at the Sandringham Flower Show, the weather was warm and dry and lots of people stopped by the stall to say Hello, ask for veg growing advice and to buy plants.

Market stall

The market stall looked good. I’ve started selling brassicas in larger plugs so that they are more developed at the point of sale – this seems to have increased their appeal and the Purple Sprouting Broccoli sold out early on in the day.

Customers

There were visitors to the show from all over the country (including my Auntie Anne, up from Southend, a nice surprise) but the question of why tomato plants have been shedding their leaves early seemed to be common to all areas. Answer: probably stress from the dry weather – you should get a bumper crop of toms though!.

 

Kohl Rabi giveaway

 

We gave away free Kohl Rabi seeds (with a biodegradable pot, some organic compost and a Kohl Rabi information sheet) which were very popular.

Rhubarb chard

 Lots of people stopped to look at the potted Rhubarb chard, convinced by the vivid ruby stems that it was rhubarb.

The Royal view from the stall

If you look really hard you can just see Prince Charles being driven past the stall on his way to view the show gardens and Royal marquee.

My favourite show garden this year was by Thistlefield Plants. Look closely and you can see some Endive and Lettuce plants from The Garden Farmer stall that have been tucked into the front of the building. I should point out that I had no involvement in creating the garden – they just bought some salad plants from me! However, I’m always interested to know what happens to plants after I’ve sold them.

Thistlefield's Show Garden

For more pictures of the Gold Medal winning Thistlefield show garden have a look at their website by clicking here.

Thanks to Carol who helped me all day on the stall and my mum Sue who also came along to help.

Summer veg

Here are some photos showing some of the jobs I’ve been up to during the summer months so far.

I look after the vegetable beds at the Farm Shop in Walsingham. Some of the fruit and vegetables from the garden are sold in the shop.

You can see the porous watering pipe on the central bed inbetween the lettuces.

"Red Salad Bowl" lettuce

"Reine de Glace" lettuce

 These tomatoes are growing outdoors in another customers’ garden:

Ripening Red Zebra tomatoes

Runner Beans (growing in an ex-fish pond)

Netting protection against birds, cabbage white butterfly etc.

Protection netting

Protection netting

Back in the Spring, two customers who bought Ready-To-Plant ‘Large Spring Vegetable Gardens’ from me, let me take photos of the plants once they had planted them in their plots. Here is a photo of the plants that they each received. There are 194 seedling plugs including lettuce, tomato, mange tout peas, spring onion, pak choi and rocket (for a full list see my main website  http://www.thegardenfarmer.co.uk/id9.html ).

Plants for a 'Large Spring Veg Garden'

 These customers have planted the seedling plugs into their allotment.

Allotment with 'Large Spring Veg Garden' plants

Another allotment view

 This customer has planted the plugs into her small town garden raised beds.

Veg in town garden

 Below are some photos from a large vegetable garden that I manage:

Globe Artichokes and "Red Baron" onions

Kale "Halbhoher Grun Kauser" and Cauliflower "Romanesco" under netting.

Celeriac "Prinz"

Courgette "Nero di Milano"

 May was a busy month for Farmers’ Markets. The first Norwich Farmers’ Market was a great success, there’s a nice photo here  on the Norwich Forum’s Flickr Site of me and Sarah Pettigree  from Brays Cottage, one of the organisers of the market, by the Garden Farmer Stall.

Last weekend I attended the NatureFest event at Narborough Hall with the Garden Farmer market stall. The rain held off for most of the day and there were some excellent activities, information stands and talks, including a Q & A with Bob Flowerdew, champion of organic gardening.

Stall at Narborough Hall

Back in March a customer asked me to prune his apple trees which hadn’t been attended to for about 20 years. The work I did on them was quite dramatic even though I had decided to do it in two sessions, one in March and a further one in the coming winter. I recently took these photos of the trees, now full of fruit and looking very healthy.

Apple tree following first phase of restorative pruning 4 months ago

Bountiful apples

 When I go back in the winter, I will also be pruning this negected wall-trained pear tree.

Pear tree prior to pruning next winter

Next weekend I will be at Fakenham Farmers’ Market and the following Tuesday I have a stall at the Sandringham Flower Show. If you’re visiting either, come along and say hello.

A Lovely Spot by the Pond

Here are some photos from Creake Abbey Farmers’ Market today. I had a lovely spot by the pond.

My new labels seem to be helping customers to choose which varieties they would like to grow.

I am helping with a free seed giveaway at the market this summer. Each month we give away some certified organic seeds, some certified organic compost, a biodegradable pot and an information leaflet which I have written given details about the plants, info on how to grow them, a recipe suggestion and other facts (all wrapped up in a compostable bag) to every child who visits the Farmers’ Market. So far we have done tomatoes, sugar dwarf peas and pumpkins. Next month will be rainbow chard. Plenty of kids have been coming along to collect their growing kits and it’s encouraging to see them coming back again the next month.

Also at the monthly markets this year is the Local Food Champion Challenge, which gives young chefs from the region the opportunity to demonstrate their skills.

I took this photo early on before the crowds gathered!

Next Saturday (14th May) I will have a stall at the brand new Farmers’ Market at The Forum in Norwich. There are around 20 stalls already booked to attend. It’s from 9am-3pm and should be a good event.

I now have an event confirmed for the 9th July. It’s the NatureFest Biodiversity event organised by Breckland Council. It’s being held in the beautiful gardens of Narborough Hall near Swaffham and I’ll have an activity based on beneficial insects and companion planting for visitors to do as well as selling plants. You can find out more here.

Also confirmed is The Garden Farmer stall at Pensthorpe Gardening, Craft and Food Fair on the weekend of June 4th and 5th. See here for more information and a list of the other stalls that will be attending (they seem to have listed me under ‘food’ rather than ‘plants’).

On a couple of occasions this year we have stalls at two events on the same day, so my good friend Carol and my partner Kirsten will be running the stall in one location whilst I am at another. Carol used to work with me at Abbey Farm Organics, she also grows her own produce at home, so she is knowledgeable about the seedlings that we sell, how to grow them, how to cook and eat them etc. Kirsten also has plenty of experience of growing organic veg and herbs and is chief seed sower at The Garden Farmer HQ. Between them they should be able to answer any questions that you have about the produce.

I’m busy planting up veg patches and raised beds for customers at the moment, the seedlings look good but do need plenty of water as it is so dry at the moment. I’m hoping to get some good “before and after” photos of projects this year, I so often remember to take one but not the other! Here’s one customers’ veg patch from scratch to now – hopefully I’ll remember to get some shots when the vegetables have grown.

and having been planted…..

This family wanted to learn how to grow veg having not tried before, so I gave an hour’s lesson to 4 kids and 2 adults whilst we all planted the raised beds with salads,beans, peas etc and sowed some carrot,beetrot and spinach seeds. I charge £10 an hour for my time so that’s how much the tailored lesson cost. They were able to ask questions and have a go at planting and sowing with guidance and we talked about watering, pests, diseases, etc.

Finally, a gratuitous shot of some smashing shallots planted 2 months ago.

Water – Just where you need it.

During the last couple of weeks I have been installing irrigation systems for two customers.  The first one below is in the garden of the Walsingham Farm’s shop.  This involved digging a trench through the lawn, laying MDPE pipe and connections to porous pipe which lays on (or in) the beds.  This is a fairly inexpensive system and straightforward to use. 

Porous pipe in fruit tree bed

 

 The porous pipe is made from old car tyres and water is distributed evenly along it’s length.  An irrigation system like this can be a more effective way of watering than spraying with a hose as the water has time to seep well in to the soil and gets to the lower roots where it is most needed.  Also less water is lost to evaporation; in time the porous pipe will be buried in the bed.

Porous pipe

 

Riser pipe to beds

The irrigation in this garden is supplied from the garden tap via ordinary hose to a riser pipe with simple “snap couplings” which are easily attached.

The following pictures show a similar system where the supply pipes have been left on the surface.

Irrigation in veg beds

Again, the porous pipe will be buried within the bed.

I have also been constructing crop protection frames made to fit the irregular shaped beds in the same garden. The material used is called “enviromesh” and will keep out birds, cabbage white butterflies, and carrot or cabbage root flies.

Pest protection

The Garden Farmer had a works outing (busman’s day off) to Warwickshire last week.  First to the “Edible Garden Show” and then to the headquarters of “Garden Organic” (formerly the H.D.R.A.) at Ryton Organic Gardens.  At the Edible Garden Show there were lots of people selling their wares: raised beds and vertical container planting are very popular this year.  Some of the stuff on offer is well made but, unfortunately, I thought that too much was not such good value and would not last beyond a season.  Sadly there seemed to be very little emphasis on organic growing.

Ryton Organic Garden www.gardenorganic.org.uk was much more enjoyable in the early spring sunshine. It is well worth a visit and as well as having a great garden with lots of informative displays about organic growing, there is a restaurant with a wide range of organic food for every diet and an excellent shop selling garden supplies, gardening books and an extensive range of organic foods and drink.

Vegetable Kingdom

The Vegetable Kingdom is their educational display designed to appeal to children and is very well presented.

Rose garden

The rose garden and herb garden, perhaps not looking their best at this time of year.

Herb garden

On Saturday I shall be attending Fakenham Farmers’ Market; the first of many markets this year.  I expect to have the following  for sale:

Various Oriental salads,

Lettuces,

Salad Rocket,

Broad Beans,

Spinach,

Swiss and Rainbow Chard,

Winter Purslane,

Endive.

Many Raised Beds

More of this year’s market dates are now being confirmed. I’ll have a stall at the Sandringham Flower Show on Weds 27th July and a stall at the Creake Abbey Plant Lovers Day on Sat 28th May. The Garden Farmer stall will also be at the reinvented Norwich Farmers’ Market on 14th May, see The Norfolk Diet website for further details. For my regular dates at Creake Abbey and Fakenham Farmers’ Markets see my website http://www.thegardenfarmer.co.uk/. As usual you can order seedlings/plants prior to the market and then pick up and pay on the day – order form on the website.

Rocket seedlings 2011

My seedlings are germinating really well in the propagator.  Not too many problems with etiolation (word of the week – meaning seedlings becoming long, drawn out  and pale due to lack of light); the trick is to get the plants out of the propagator soon after germination and into a cooler, brighter area.  I’ve got a good start on spring salads and onions, tomatoes, chillis and aubergines. I’ll be selling 13 different varieties of tomato this year:

MATINA – Early and productive salad tomato, very reliable vine type.

YELLOW PERFECTION – Thin skinned, super tasty vine tomato. Very productive.

KORALIK – New ultra early bush tomato, high yield of small sweet fruit.

BERNER ROSE – Fine large pink tomato; easy to grow vine type.

GOLDEN QUEEN – High yielding yellow vine tomato, exceptional flavour.

URBIKANY** – High yields of 5cm red fruit; early and well flavoured bush type.

COSTULOTO GENOVESE** – Large vine tomato, great for salads and cooking.

PRINCIPE BORGHESE – Bush type, for cooking, bottling and drying.

RED CLUSTER PEAR**- Hundreds of small pear shaped fruit, bush type.

ST. PIERRE – Traditional tasty French vine variety with large fruit. Productive.

ZUCKERTRAUBE – Large trusses of tasty cherries. Vine tomato for protected growing.

RED ZEBRA**- Red and orange striped vine tomato with exceptional flavour.

PURPLE UKRAINE** – Early purple plum tomato, beautiful and delicious, vine type.

I’m building plenty of raised beds at the moment – they all still look rather bare though, I’m looking forward to getting some seedlings planted in them. 

Raised bed frames

 

  These beds were made 18 inches deep using larch planking which comes from woodland near Melton Constable.  Larch is an excellent wood to use as it is highly durable and dries very hard so does not need any chemical treatment.  The compost and soil mix used to fill the beds is supplied by David Crown at Docking. This compost is also produced in Norfolk from the brown bin composting scheme run by the council; I’ve been using this compost and soil mix for a few years now and it makes an excellent growing medium.

 

Raised beds filled and gravel paths laid

 The raised beds pictured below were made with larch decking left over from the customer’s building project and are four planks deep.  Along the front edge of the new veg area I have built a raised border which will be planted with a box hedge.  Immediately behind this will go a rabbit-proof fence which, once the hedge is established, should not be visible.

 

Raised beds for vegetables and raised border for hedge

Getting growing in 2011

I have sown my first batch of seeds for the year and built a propagator to germinate them in. I’m using soil heating cable buried in a tray of damp sand to heat the seedling plugs from underneath. A layer of carpet on top of the plug trays keeps the heat in. Using this I hope to get tomato, pepper and aubergine seedlings off to a good start along with some lettuce and oriental salad leaves which should be ready for my first Farmers’ Markets of the year (namely, Fakenham on the 26th March and Creake Abbey on the 2nd April).

I’m busy helping customers to prepare their veg gardens for the Spring. Making lots of raised beds and planting and pruning fruit trees.  I have planted a mixed fruit orchard with trees bought from “Keepers Nursery” in Kent.  Their excellent website can be viewed here. They sell fruit trees with a full range of rootstock including full size standard trees which is quite unusual to find. The trees that we received were vigorous, healthy trees and look set to thrive.

Planting a cherry tree in a new orchard.

If you are wondering what potato varieties to plant this year (you can put them in the ground mid March-April) then why not try The East Anglia Potato Day event on Saturday 12th Feb in Stowmarket. It’s an annual event that has been running since 1994, and is organised by the Organic Gardening groups of Suffolk, Norfolk and Ipswich. They say they hope to have around 100 different varieties of potato available to sell and aim for 25% of those to be organic.

Further afield, in Warwickshire, on the weekend 18-20 March the Edible Garden Show is being held. Billed as the first-ever national event dedicated exclusively to ‘Grow Your Own’ fruit and vegetables, you can see a list of exhibitors and find out more about what’s in store here.

If you’re wondering what you could be doing now to get your veg plot ready for Spring then have a look at the RHS Grow Your Own website where they have a very comprehensive list of January jobs.

Raised beds

Raised beds from other direction

More raised beds

Planting a beech hedge - good for privacy, wildlife and as a windbreak.

Too Many Courgettes?

 

The Dersingham Village voice magazine is now available in full and in colour from here: http://www.dersingham.org.uk/voice.htm my Garden Farmer article for this edition is on page 74.

I’ve recently joined the Norfolk Smallholders Training Group http://www.nstg.org.uk/ The group had it’s Annual Show and Market on Sunday 1st August in the lovely Sheringham Park. Unfortunately they had sold out of market spaces so there wasn’t a Garden Farmer stall there this year but it was a good day out. For a small joining fee you can take part in low cost one day courses arranged by the NSTG, future courses include Plan and plant an orchard and Make a clay bread oven.

I’ve been plaiting garlic…….

…….following the clear instructions here http://www.bloomingfieldsfarm.com/garbrdhow.html .

The fruit and vegetables in my garden are growing well, the sweet and chilli peppers seem to be particularly productive this year.

Purple Beauty sweet peppers

Hungarian Hot Wax chilli peppers

Hales Best Jumbo melon

'Tamra' cucumber

The cucumber ‘Tamra’ is an old and rare variety so I have been saving some of the seeds. It’s really simple to do and can be done with any non-hybrid fruits and veg. Let a cucumber become over ripe on the plant then cut it open and scoop out the seeds. Put the seeds into a jar of water for 2 days. The viable seeds will sink to the bottom and the non-viable seeds will float as they are full of air. Get rid of the bad seeds and rinse and repeat several times. You will be left with just the viable seeds which needs to be dried on kitchen paper or newspaper or, if the weather is warm and dry, just on a plate.

Judicious courgette planting this year has meant that we haven’t been overrun with them, however I’m always looking out for new ways to use them and so I’ve been making Courgette and Carrot Bread. The recipe I’ve been using is from ‘Bread, from ciabatta to rye’ by Linda Collister (See here to borrow it from Norfolk library). It makes very light and moist bread which keeps well, freezes well and tastes great.

Courgette and carrot bread

 

Pot marigold

The Norfolk Diet

Market news – 3 items:

1) Norwich Farmer’s Market is currently in talks with the Council about their contract but they are aiming to come back refreshed and possibly at a new venue asap.

The Garden Farmer market stall will be one of several new additions to the Norwich Farmer’s Market. Sarah Pettegree of Bray’s Cottage Pork Pies  in North Norfolk is the market organiser who is doing a fantastic job at promoting local food producers – see her informative ‘Norfolk Diet’ facebook page here. If you are on twitter then you can follow the Norfolk Diet here.

2) The first North Norfolk Food and Drink Festival will be held on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th September 2010 at Holkham Hall. Billed as a celebration of the best of food and drink in North Norfolk, there will be over 60 independent North Norfolk food and drink producers whose wares can be seen, tasted and bought. There will also be a food theatre with a varied programme of talks and demonstrations. We’re looking forward to this, it should be a great event, come over and say hello to us at The Garden Farmer stall.

The Food and Drink Festival clashes with the September Creake Abbey Market so my thanks to Carol who will be running The Garden Farmer market stall at Creake Abbey on Saturday 4th.

3) The RAF Marham Farmer’s Market is taking a break and will be back at Christmas.

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The new Walsingham Farm Shop  (or see here for their main website) has had it’s grand opening at Norfolk Lavender in Heacham. Selling local meat and cheese, fresh fish and vegetables as well as locally made preserves and snacks it’s well worth a visit. The outside sleeper beds have been planted by The Garden Farmer, photos below.

Now is a good time to think about what crops you would like to plant for the winter. My leeks are selling incredibly well and brassicas are always popular. I currently have for sale, amongst other things:

Broccoli (Purple Sprouting Early and Purple Sprouting Late),

Brussel Sprouts (3 varieties. Dakmar, Sanda and Seven Hills),

Autumn Cabbage (January King, Holland Late Winter, and Savoy Piacenza),

Spring Cabbage (Myatts Offenham Compacta, and Wintergreen),

Calabrese  (Belstar F1)

Cauliflower (Belot F1, Autumn Giant, Romanesco – see below, and Violetta)

Kale (Pentland Brigg, Nero di Toscana - see below , Sutherland, Siberian, and Red Russian).

I am selling the Nero di Toscana Kale (aka Black Kale) by popular demand. Here’s what the Real Seed Company say about it…

Nero Di Toscana (Early strain)
A non-heading traditional kale from Tuscany also known as Palm Kale or Black Tuscan Kale. It has long strappy leaves that are quite deeply savoyed.

Normally you use the mature leaves as a cooked vegetable, but this has such a nice flavour (different from normal kale!) that we have been eating the thinnings and baby leaves raw in salad. Not quite as hardy as the other kales, but will stand well into winter, and often right through into spring in milder years.

As well as sowing in Spring outdoors, you can alternatively sow it in a polytunnel in late summer/early autumn and pick a few leaves at a time all winter when other salad ingredients are scarce. When it finally bolts, the flower shoots are a gourmet treat raw or cooked.

Finally, I can’t resist adding a photo of a Romanesco Cauliflower…almost too good to eat.

Cold Sunny Spring Days

On Mayday weekend I had three market stalls, including two at the excellent Bircham Windmill.  Despite the sun, it was very windy and very cold, hence the wooly hat and winter coat.  However, lots of people passed by and plenty of plants were sold.               

The Garden Farmer stall at Bircham Windmill

 The produce was just out of reach from my neighbour.                    

                    

              

I shall be back at Bircham Windmill this coming bank holiday Sunday and Monday for their Country Fair.   

The regular markets at Fakenham, Creake Abbey and RAF Marham have also been great successes this month. I’ve just about sold out of tomato plants now, but the chilli and sweet peppers are coming on well as are cucumbers, courgettes and melons . I am selling 6 varieties of sweet pepper and 4 of chilli pepper.   

I’ve cleared out my polytunnel of oriental salads and lettuce, it’s now too hot in there for them and they go to seed quickly, and planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and melons. No aubergines though as, foolishly, I have sold them all and forgot to keep some  for putting in my own garden! From now on I will feed these polytunnel plants every week or so until Early August with a liquid seaweed, and they will need plenty of water.  Some of the more thin skinned tomatoes such as Yellow Perfection need consistent watering to prevent their skins from splitting.   

I have completed a planting plan for the edible garden in the Walks in Kings Lynn which is managed by Transition Kings Lynn. 

                   

The plan is now up on the wall in Nourish the community cafe on London Road in Kings Lynn. Hopefully people will take a look and join in with some of the community events at the garden over the summer.                  

Kailaan

 Kailaan is an oriental vegetable which is new to me this year.  Sown and grown like other oriental salad leaves, it starts to go to seed quite quickly and produces a flower shoot which, if picked young, is like very tender sprouting broccoli.  The more you pick the shoots, the more the plant produces.  It can be steamed like sprouting broccoli but I find that it’s so tasty that it rarely makes it back to the kitchen.                   

Winter Purslane also known as Miners Cress

Another less common leafy plant is Winter Purslane, also known as Claytonia or Miner’s Lettuce.  It’s a great winter and early spring salad leaf, totally hardy, easy to grow and very productive with a mild lettuce flavour.  Kids seem to love it, perhaps for the flavour but more I suspect, because of the dinky little leaves.         

We had a few nights of very cold weather this month. I had to bring some of the most delicate plants into the kitchen to avoid frost damage including runner beans, squashes and courgettes, French beans and sweetcorn.  More hardy plants such as all the brassicas and salads were left out. A covering of horticultural fleece can give some frost protection but I discovered that it is not enough on its own for plants which are particularly tender. I also use it to protect carrots against root fly invasion.            

There was a piece about The Garden Farmer in the recent edition of the Home and Garden supplement of the Lynn News, you can see it here on page 4.    

Now is a good time to ridge potatoes, if you haven’t already. By pulling soil up against the stems you will prevent light from getting to the pots and turning them green. If you are growing pots in sacks then more pots will develop from the parts of the stem that are covered in soil.  An alternative to ridging is regular and generous mulching, which has the same effect but with less effort.  

Today I started working on the vegetable display beds outside the new Walsingham Farms’ Shop, which confusingly, is on the Norfolk Lavender site at Heacham.  The shop should be open by the end of the week.  I will put some pictures up when I can get my camera to work again.