A few pics from July 2012

The courgettes and sweetcorn have been enjoying the end of July heat-wave



Another month to fill out and these cobs will be ready to harvest, come on sun!



But only a few days for this courgette to be ready!



Good to see some weed free crops at last, (although I don't get to see my husband and weed-free crops, it's one or the other!)
the wet spring/summer has meant lots of weeding this year



And rainbow chard looking lovely too!



Looks like a lovely patch of wild flowers full of bees and other wildlife,
 but it's actually 2 beds of carrots that didn't get weeded (can't win them all)

Brassicas in 'Prescott' field
 (these fields used to be part of Wye College farm, and 3 of the fields are named after former principals,
as well as John, there's also  'Holmes' and 'Lucas')
These plants survived the wireworm, sadly many of the squash plants didn't.



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').