A general view of the chicken pen showing their raised housing and the large elder and hawthorne shrubs that they like to sit  and scratch under. They are enjoying searching for bugs in the newly cut grass.

Follwing advice from Alan Schofield from Growing with Nature, this year we tried planting a run of both broad beans and climbing french beans in our greenhouse (we would have used a polytunnel but don’t yet have one).  The french beans in particular are cropping much better than outside and are easier to pick and manage.

Everything has been late this year because of the cold start. Our first Maris Bard new potatoes were dug today.

Last years’ scions grafted at South Lakeland Orchard Group’s grafting day at Growing Well Sizergh are now being transplanted in our orchard. Rosemary Russet, Oslin, Tom Putt and Howgate Wonder are just a few of the 18 varieties planted. See the National Fruit Collection website for more information about apple varieties. Once planted they will have rabbit and deer guards placed round them.

As part of the expansion of our fruit and vegetable growing area, we have asked Alan Schofield of Growing with Nature to act as a consultant to advise on crops and varieties that are particularly good for this area, succession planting and on scaling-up to more commercial production. We hope to supply as much of the produce as possible when the resource centre opens later this year.

Alan has over 30 years experience of commercial, organic growing and is a founding member of the Organic Growers’ Alliance.

All our onions were harvested a couple of weeks ago  and dried in the old silage barn. It has been a really good crop this time and they have now been strung into ropes and will supply us throughout the winter and spring.

This was the first year that we tried growing them undersown with clover and it has worked well.

We attended a South Lakeland Orchard Group visit to Sprint Mill where Edward and Romola Achland showed us round their garden and orchard. There was a chance to try out sycthing in the orchard as well as discussion of problems of scab and canker on different varieties of apple. Tea and cakes in the garden of the old mill were very much appreciated but ended abruptly with a heavy cloudburst.

Edward Ackland makes gates, hurdles and implements from clefted oak and hazel from his woods. 

A bumper harvest of strawberries this year. We have tried several different varieties including ‘Alice’; ‘Royal Sovereign’; ‘Malling Pandora’ and ‘Honey oye’. The last two don’t redden as much as the others but are still very ripe and sweet.

Redcurrants, whitecurrants and raspberries are all fruiting well. So far, we have made redcurrant jelly and strawberry jam. The jam uses strawberries and a half quantity of redcurrants based on an Ashburton Cookery School  recipe. We attended the cookery school’s ‘Garden to Table’ course run by Rob Dawe in 2007 and found it very enjoyable and useful for what we are doing here.

The recent dry weather has meant that we can get on with work in the vegetable patch. Some planting has begun - all of the potatoes and most of the onions are in and the first sowing of carrots, parsnips and broad beans have been made. Other beds are being prepared and a lot of hoeing has been going on.

We mentioned a beetle bank in an earlier post. Bit early to notice any impact but we have had a few beetles around including a mint beetle which very hepfully eats dock leaves.

Meanwhile in the greenhouse, everything is growing like mad. The tomatoes, which have germinated in their ‘hot bed’, are due to be planted out into the main greenhouse bed this weekend. There are about 8 different varieties from large, tasty purple ones to small yellow plum which together make a wonderful tomato salad later in the year.The salad leaves are ready for their first pick and our very ‘early’ potatoes are looking healthy and strong and should soon be harvested to make way for other crops coming on. At the far end of the greenhouse are this year’s grafts of local varieties of apple trees. Done in March this year they have been kept in the greenhouse to help the grafts knit together out of any wind or rain. Most seem to have taken successfully and will be moved outside very soon protected by fleece at night until they’ve hardened off.

This year we have planted some early potatoes - Ulster Chieftan - in bags in the greenhouse. We use ‘mole hill’ soil in the bags, collected from the golf course. We use our outdoor crops from around June but will hopefully be harvesting these a little earlier. Freshly dug new potatoes are a feature of our seasonal menus for our meeting rooms.

Also coming up are tomato seedlings, peppers, salad leaves and peas. Flower seedling include sweet peas (right), antirhinum, cosmos and nicotina. These are used for cut flowers in the lodges. Tagetes and calendula are grown as companion plants to encourage natural pest control. This means we don’t have to use any chemical products on any of our vegetables, fruit or flowers.

Earlier this year we began trials of ‘bokashi’ composting. We found out about this system at a Bowland Sustainable Tourism Network meeting where Simon Brockholes gave a demonstration. This method allows you to compost a much wider range of waste (including cooked food waste)than in traditional methods. The process involves putting a layer of food waste in a bucket then a sprinkling of bran injected with microbes then more food waste and so on. The bucket is sealed and left for two weeks. A tap at the bottom of the bucket releases the juice from the decomposition which can be diluted and used as a plant food. The contents of the bucket can then be put on a traditional compost heap or they can be buried in a trench where you are going to plant crops. We are trying both methods. As part of our environmental policy we are trying to reduce our waste but then to process and use as much of it as we can on site.

Part of our trial is measuring the amount of waste currently produced from our meeting rooms (vegetable peelings, tealeaves, coffee grounds, food scraps, used napkins etc) so that we can calculate the size of bokashi buckets needed. We are also working out what we will need when our resource centre and cafe are opened later this year.