We are gearing up for the season now and as you can see above there are plenty of plants already in
the ground and everything is responding and growing very well indeed. That is a good indication of our soil quality.
Although to some it may seem like a large growing area, we have a long way to go before we are at the capacity we would like. But until the beds are done we are planting the more important crops that we need and other crops will have to wait.
The broad beans are in flower and look as if they will be producing an excellent crop, these were planted in September 2019 and have overwintered well. We have some early peas coming through and they will be flowering very soon. The onions are filling out well and Loraine has planted many more to take us through the summer into the winter months and beyond. Apart from the main crop onions, there are shallots, garlic, and spring onions all in full swing.
The broad deans on the right are now flowering and will soon produce their pods.
We have carrots, beetroot, parsnips, lettuce, radish, cabbages, cauliflowers, and much more growing really fast in the mild and sunny weather we have been getting as of late. When the crops are larger we shall post further photos to show the progression they have made.
The potatoes for this year are being grown in bags and tubs and if they do well it may be the way to grow them each year as the preparation is so much easier and the cropping should less work as well. These are looking as in the photo below:
Potatoes are on the left whilst the Strawberries are on the right.
The first early potatoes are in the tubs (3 to a tub) and the second early are in the black sacks (2 to a sack). We have used the well-rotted manure from the back of the sand-ring and the growth is superb and green.
The smaller pots on the right contain 3 types of strawberries (41 plants) and are 3 to a pot. As we do not have all of our growing beds ready this will suffice for this year and we shall take runners in the late summer/autumn for planting out next year.
The orchard has woken up now and all but 1 tree is in leaf/blossom so it looks as if the rogue pony that broke our fruit trees did not kill any of them. It will however put some of them back a little as much of their growth was snapped off when the pony did its hatchet job on them.
We have 8 apple trees of various types but mainly Cornish varieties to suit the weather here, three pear trees form the rear of the orchard and on the Eastside we have 2 walnut trees, 1 hornbeam, 1 hazel (cobnut), and 2 cherry trees. In the middle of the orchard, a further 2 cherry trees a Victoria plum are growing quite happily. We still have room for many more should we feel the need.
The fruit bushes have fruits forming on both the blackcurrants and the redcurrants, the extra-large blackberries are putting out lots of growth and should settle in well. Out new raspberry canes, autumn plants have not produced any growth yet so we are waiting with bated breath on that one.
Compensating for those late raspberry plants, our new asparagus beds are sending up beautiful asparagus spears which are already about a foot high and nearly every plant has sent shoots up. They are however OFF limits this year as they need to gain strength for subsequent years cropping and so there will be no harvest of those until next year. We are to allow them to grow into ferns so they will have to be supported as it can get rather windy up there in the fields at times because of the lack of windbreaks.