This will be a fairly short one this week. I’ve had a busy day and I want to be settled with a cold glass of beer for when the footie starts at 8.00.
Flaming June innit. I mean it’s flaming rubbish so far, though as I write this it’s actually very pleasant outside, but on most days we are getting 3 seasons before lunchtime. It’s not that we have had tons of rain, because we haven’t, just annoying bit and pieces. It’s not that it is that cold, just annoyingly chilly. If somebody could shift that stubborn jetstream I would be ever so grateful. The countryside is looking lush and vibrant, but some of my crops are still struggling to deal with the conditions – the summer squash (courgettes, patty pan and spaghetti) have taken an age to establish and green up, but they are finally looking more healthy. The climbing beans are climbing, reluctantly, but the foliage is looking distinctly washed out, and they’ve been in for a month!
The greenhouse and polytunnel are looking much more encouraging. If you ‘do’ Facebook you can see a video that I shot last Monday, giving a guided tour of the greenhouse. I know that some of you have viewed it, but if you haven’t and would like to, just search for the Moyns Park Organics page and click on the post. If you are not into social media I can tell you that the cucumbers are coming on strong after a slow start, the tomatoes are now on to their 6th fruit truss, and since making my video one or two fruit are just beginning to get a hint of colour on them. The sweet peppers are forming small fruits and there are some decent length green chilli peppers. The polytunnel tomatoes are doing nicely – well 3 out of the 4 rows are. Most years I try a new variety, and this year it is Purple Calabash. The seed catalogue made it sound exotic and worth a try, but so far the fruit set is pretty dismal, so I may have picked a dud. Oh well, you don’t know until you try, and they may come good. Today I connected up the drip irrigation in the tunnel, which will make watering far less time consuming and is a much more efficient in terms of water usage.
UK produce is still conspicuous by its absence, so the contents of the shop remains minimal. As a consequence I will temporarily suspend the minimum order charge, because I know that for some of you it’s difficult to get to that value with what is currently available. There are no lettuces this week. The damage cased by the slugs seriously reduced the number of viable heads that I could harvest from the last batch, and the new lot is another week from being ready to cut. The price of imported broccoli has gone nuts again, so I’ve knocked that on the head, but I will be cutting round summer cabbages and picking the first cavolo nero leaves.
Brace yourselves….drum roll….there is good news for next week! With a fair wind and following seas I will be digging new potatoes next week and picking broad beans. There may even be some kohlrabi and Florence fennel, but we’ll see how that goes. Finally! It’s beginning to feel a lot like summer….then I’ll be off for a week, sunning myself on the south Cornwall coast. This is your second warning of my forthcoming holiday. We are off on the 29th, so deliveries will be normal leading up to then, but no Saturday collections. Neither will I be at Wyken the following Saturday, because we will be sitting in traffic on the M5. Everything returns to normal week commencing 8th July. Your final reminder will feature here next Sunday, but I can guarantee that I will receive orders while I am away.
I was sitting in the greenhouse having my coffee break early last week when a bee headed towards me with a big chunk of green leaf in its jaws, it bypassed me and disappeared into the hollow rung of a metal ladder that was leaning up against the wall beside me. It was a leaf cutter bee, and it was using the leaf to create cells inside the ladder rung in which to lay its eggs. Quite a lot of the pepper plants in that section of the greenhouse have the tell-tale notches in their leaves made by the bee. I tried to take a photo of it arriving with a leaf, but failed, so I had to settle for one of it emerging from its nest (see above). That’s that ladder out of commission for the summer!
Right, that’s your lot. Have a good week, fingers crossed that the weather improves, and let’s hope for a decent performance in the football.
Phil