There is plenty of anticipation as we look ahead to this growing season and having just put the final touches to this year’s crop plan at The Farm, we are beginning to get a sense of the massive operation that lies ahead.
We grow over 100 different species direct from seed. All of this must be mapped out, not only in terms of its place on The Farm – but also its place in the calendar. From buying the right number of seeds; to sowing them at the right time; to ensuring the correct spacing between plantings – it needs to be planned to perfection, as even small errors in calculation can have dramatic effects when growing at scale.
The process of creating our crop plan this year has been the perfect learning exercise for our new Growing Team, allowing them to get into the detail of each crop, as well as making informed decisions of their own for the season ahead.
Nick, our Market Garden lead, says: “This year feels super exciting, as we keep learning and experimenting with diverse multi-species, green manure cover crops to feed the soil. We’ve had some amazing results already with over 45 worms in one soil sample. Coming up this Spring we are pushing crops earlier and going big on the salad to complement our field and tunnel crops.”
In our Polytunnels we want to continue to build on recent success in growing chillies, tomatoes and cucumbers. With more continuous production, we want to minimise unproductive gaps in the season by turning over beds much quicker. We also plan to trial a new bed layout in one of our tunnels moving from 5 to 7 beds. This will increase our growing area by a substantial amount. Some new crops we want to experiment with this year include Pak Choi, Radish and Sugar Snap Peas.
We are trying out a couple of new varieties of Squash, hoping to bring even more unusual and wonderful additions to your boxes this autumn.
With plants beginning to germinate in the prop tunnel, we can really begin to imagine the final crop that will make it into the veg boxes this summer. There’s a lot of hard work to get done in the meantime – but excitement is certainly building amongst the field team.
By John Miller, Food and Farming Manager
