Green Garlic

A.K.A spring garlic or wet garlic, the young green garlic looks like a small leek in disguise,
eat it all, as you would a spring onion.
The taste is milder than dry garlic, and it sweetens as it cooks, delicious!

As the season progresses, the bottom 'bulbs' out to give a more recognisable shape.
 Even at this stage, you can eat it all, as the cloves have only just began to seperate.

Some of our garlic back in February.

And more, taken in May last year

The drought, the rain and growing vegetables

This time last year we were struggling with an 'un-official drought' , hardly any rain from the middle of March until June.

This year, we have an official drought, and we're struggling with the amount of rain we've had through April and so far in May. The drought is a long term problem though, affecting all of us, with resorvoir levels in the South East below average and groundwater sources at moderate or severely low levels.

Hopefully, the very wet conditions prove to be a short term problem for us growers, we are forecast 3 consecutive (mostly) dry days from tomorrow at least!
After getting ahead on our planting when we had a couple of dry and sunny weeks at the end of March, we are behind now, we have lots of transplants ready to go out in the field, its almost impossile to do any weed control, and the slug and snail populations are getting fat on carrot seedlings!
Bring on the sun.

And whilst I'm on the subject of water, we now have a 'treebog' compost loo at Ripple Farm, no water needed to flush (and no emptying needed, the willows planted round the site feed on the 'compost').

April on Ripple Farm (part 2)

Part 2 of whats happening at Ripple in April.......

Early spuds grown under perforated plastic to bring the harvest forward (is it better environmentally to grow a small amount this way or import them from Egypt for a week or two (or keep eating wrinkly old ones a bit longer))?

And looking through the hedge at ridges of our main crop potatoes in Olantigh Field,
 our chalky soil is almost white here as it rises up towards the downs.

Spring onions off to a good start

Rows of mini craters where there should be rows of broad beans, wireworm (the larvae of click beetle) are attacking
from underneath, and rooks are pulling up the small plants to eat the wireworm!

So we're sowing broad beans in seed trays to transplant, we wil not be beaten!

I spent a peaceful Saturday afternoon planting strawberry plants in the shelter of the walled garden, we grow them through these 'mypex' sheets to help with weed control, as the plants will be in the ground for a few years. It also to help conserve the moisture in the soil and keeps the berries cleaner than if they were grown in bare earth.
In the gender specific world of plant breeding, the varieties I planted are 'Alice', 'Christine', 'Florence' and 'Honeyeye'
Compare those to a few brassica varieties - 'Samson', 'Ironman' , 'Supervoy and 'Duncan' !!

We'd love to have patchwork fields of many colours (and sometimes we do) but here we have patchworks of crop covers to protect our new plantings, as there are plenty of pests out there ready to take more than their fair share of our crops.
There are some baby kale plants under there, but there will be a gap in availability before these are ready to harvest
 (we're coming up to the 'Hungry Gap' time of year for UK vegetable growers)

It doesn't look much yet, but here's one of our 'bee food' phacelia strips, which has self seeded
and will soon be in flower again.

And finally, one of the damson trees in our hedges in flower.

April at Ripple

April is a very busy month on the farm, we're still harvesting lots of over-wintered crops as well as sowing and planting the new season's ones. Although the South East, like many other areas, is officially in drought, we have had enough rain (but not too much) during March and April to enable us to get our potatoes planted, as well as most of our onions and garlic. We've sown spinach and salad direct, and transplanted early cabbages, kales, chard and others.

It's that time of year when our over-wintered greens just want to spread their seed, so they head skywards, looking very pretty as they flower, and very tasty in our stir fry bags. First to go are the brassicas:-

Majestic Red Russian Kale in flower

Red curly kale growing skywards (and dancing, or just a windy day)

'Green-in-snow' mustard leaf, going to seed but we already have
 new sowings of salad leaves ready to harvest from a polytunnel

Salad rocket in flower (the flowers are very tasty in a salad)

The over-wintered spinach and chard will go to seed soon too but we have
some time to harvest the new spring regrowth first

T

Lettuce transplanted in a polytunnel, and rows of newly sown salad leaves

New Season's Pak Choi ready to harvest.


(I'm having a few problems uploading photos to this post, so part 2 of April goings on to follow soon!)

Feb 2012, Ripple in Pictures

February 2012

Winter finally arrived in February with 4-6 inches of snow and 2 weeks of freezing temperatures. The vegetables didn’t mind the snow too much (although they were a bit harder to find than usual!) but the freezing temperatures damaged the less hardy greens such as spinach, chard and some of the salad leaves so there will be less of those through March.

And the end of February has given us some relatively mild and dry weather, so we've been busy spreading muck and cultivating, and even planted a few early potatoes today (27 Feb).

The South East is officially in drought because ground water levels are low due to less than average rainfall and increasing water usage. There is no immediate effect on us as growers, our fields are holding plenty of water at the moment, but we will be happy to have plenty of nice gentle rain over the next growing season, both to replenish the groundwater sources (for every-one's benefit) and to establish our vegetable crops.

 We are learning to adapt to relatively dry springs, for example, trying to cultivate newly rotated ground in the autumn, so we are not losing important moisture at planting time and working on a 2 year glass&clover/one year vegetable rotation, enabling more organic matter to build up in the soil, which helps to hold water. We will also be collecting rainwater on a small scale for irrigation, but as we are only tenant farmers, we would struggle to make the investment in a reservoir for large scale water collection/storage.

Claytonia salad leaves growing in a polytunnel. Claytonia is the cultivated variety of the wild plant
 'Spring Beauty' and adds some balance to our spicy winter salad bags.

Autumn sown garlic, growing inside our rented Victorian walled garden.

'Olantigh' Field, late sown leeks to the left, some of this year's veg ground to the right and the North Downs Way'
public footpath going across the field.

...and Olantigh Field again, looking down towards Wye.

Newly ploughed ground outside the walled garden.

Orchard Field, rows of kales to the right, and more of this year's veg ground to the left.

Polytunnel cultivated, ready for sowings of early salad greens and spinach

First batch of seed potatoes, some of which were sown today, March 27.

Rinbow chard seedlings, showing their beauty already.

Snow

Just wondering how many vegetables we will manage to harvest this week.....

curly kale just showing above the snow...

and red russian kale....

there's some purple sprouting broccoli there somewhere....

January in Pictures

2011 was a 'funny old year' weather wise, mild and wet from January (after a very cold and snowy Nov and Dec), then very hot and dry in April, May and June. We finally got a decent amount of rain in July, and then some more and some more! A definite lack of sun and warmth through July and August, followed by a wonderfully sunny September and October was pretty good too (even I went swimming in the sea that first weekend!). And winter has been very kind to us as growers so far, relatively mild with few frosts, our winter greens are faring much better than last winter, no complaints there, too mild even to affect the whitefly that like to hide in the curly kale.

But it does seem un-seasonally mild, and the spring and summer did seem a bit mixed up, so a bit unsettling. Its much easier growing vegetables when the weather does what you expect!

No photo blog in Nov and Dec due to my camera not working, but back in action now, so I thought I would show you everything that we are harvesting on the farm at the moment (despite it being January, we still spend at least 4 days a week harvesting and packing for farmers markets, our box scheme, other home delivery and box schemes (including Growing Communities, Harvest 4 U, Sutton Farm and Local Greens),  shops and restaurants in Kent and London (too many to mention, see our website for a listing).

We sell at Wye, Whitstable and Stoke Newington Farmer's Markets, all of which only allow us to sell produce we have grown ourselves.



sprouts - not just for Christmas!



A selection of cabbages........

Celeriac, most is covered by straw for frost protection.

Beetroot, again, most of the crop is snug under a layer of straw

Carrots under fleece, with more under straw.

And here's the beetroot under straw.

Not much to see, but there are some parsnips in these beds, we have to search for them, not our best crop this year, as many didn't germinate in the hot, dry spring

Spinach

Green Chard

Rainbow Chard

Swede

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Green Curly Kale

Cavelo Nero (Black Kale)

Red Curly Kale

Tha mainstay of our winter salad bags - 'green-in-snow' mustard leaf

Rocket, going to seed now, but the flowering shoots are great in salads.

Sweet Red Russian Kale, the smaller leaves are harvested for salad,
 and the larger ones for stir fry bags and mixed kale bags

Sweet Hungry Gap Kale, again the smaller leaves are great in salads (similar taste to pak-choi)

A glasshouse full of Claytonia, the cultivated form of the wild plant 'Spring Beauty'. Also known as 'Miners Lettuce, getting its name due to its use as a fresh salad green by miners in the 1849 Gold Rush in California

Red Mustard leaves, growing in a glasshouse.

One of the more tender winter salad leaves, Mizuna. This crop has already been cut once, and if the mild weather continues we will get another cut from it.

And the crops harvested in the Autumn and now in store include potatoes (under the covers),
 as well as onions and squash.

Over-wintered garlic, something to look forward to in the Spring (we do still have some stored, dried garlic too).

And a late crop of leeks ( we do also have some larger ones we are harvesting at the momet)