Saturday 20th April   10am - 3pm

Makers & Bakers Spring Market

Makers & Bakers Market

<h2>2022 had been a great growing year. However, it left us with a chilly sting in the tail.&nbsp;</h2>

The frost and freezing temperatures in early December seemed to come out of nowhere. The veg had basked in a very warm autumn and weren’t ready for the extreme cold. In a way, neither were we. As George recalled: ‘The temperatures suddenly dropped on a Wednesday -&nbsp;which is our veg box packing day, the busiest day of the week. I could suddenly see what was coming but there was no time to cover the fields. Next year, I’ll make sure we’re prepared with nets and fleeces and ready to act at a moment’s notice’.&nbsp;It was easy to see the impact on the brassicas above ground, but the roots were harder to assess and it turns out that the damage is worse than George initially thought. The celeriac and beetroot froze solid and, after they’d thawed, were sadly inedible: ‘it’s shame to lose the celeriac in particular. Not because it’s a huge financial loss but because we try, wherever we can, to fill the boxes and shelves with our own veg and it’s a missed opportunity.’&nbsp;While the cold came at a cost, George was ready for the heatwave and drought in July: ‘I felt like I’d been here before and had been stung waiting for the rain. This year, I didn’t wait and we managed to get basic irrigation down in time, which saved the crops.’ The success of the squash was a real relief. They were in a particularly dry field and, despite the fact they are a tropical plant and love the heat, the lack of rain could have been a real issue to this important harvest.&nbsp;As ever, with no field scale irrigation on the farm and extended hotter periods on the horizon, it’s water that’s the main problem. With no natural water source on the farm to tap into, George is left with two options: ‘continue to pay huge amounts for mains water, which isn’t sustainable for us or the planet. Or, we need to invest in water capture and storage.’ Unfortunately, it is an expensive exercise and we’ll probably have to navigate a difficult few years before we can move forward. In the meantime, we will continue to make the most of the precious water we have with our organic practices and principles.&nbsp;Looking back, if George had to pick his veggie ‘highlight’ of the year it would be the sensational Purple Sprouting Broccoli: ‘usually harvested in January time, this crop arrived totally by surprise brought on by the warm November. I’ve never seen anything like it before and probably never will again!’. And looking forward, a number of the fields are now in the 3rd year of their fertility building green manure (nitrogen fixing clovers) and look very promising: ‘3-4 years ago, dry spells conspired against making it hard to get the green manure established, which had a knock-on affect on fertility for at least 3 years but now, I’m hopeful we’ll see some really good crops from those fields’.Due to the loss of the beetroot and celeriac, we’ve stumbled into the Hungry Gap (when the winter roots have gone and we’re still waiting for spring greens) a little earlier than we would have hoped. The next few months will be lean and there won’t be much to harvest from our fields. However, this time of the year is still hugely important to growers as we await our seed delivery, propagate like mad and, when the ground warms, get as much planted as possible. It’s also a good time to look ahead and accept that, if the weather is going to continue to throw us all curve balls, we need plans in place so we can move fast, adapt, think on our feet and try to work with the unpredictability as best we can. That way, hopefully, in 2023 we’ll bring you another great year of organic veg.&nbsp;

Looking back at 2022

The propagation bench is switched on, the greenhouses have been cleaned, the polytunnels tidied - it’s time to sow! It’s always exciting when the first seed delivery arrives and this year, the box was&nbsp;jam packed&nbsp;with little paper bags of seeds, promising all sorts of exciting varities (alongside the usual favourites). ‘Getting things going’ in January is&nbsp;crucial&nbsp;if you’re hoping to be harvesting your own produce in June and as soon as the delivery hit the bench, the team got to work.&nbsp; George is propagating more of his own seedlings than ever, although, as he explained, it’s less of a step change from last year: ‘in 2021 we propagated far, far more than we’d ever done before. We wanted more control over the supply chain and were lucky enough to have the experienced staff to take on the job. This year, we’ve figured out what we’re good at and we’re building on that to give us the longest possible season.’&nbsp; Successes of last year include lots of the market garden produce - beans, tomatoes, chard, salads and courgettes. Propagating kale and spring onions also worked well, and George is planning to up the volume of the field scale veg by sowing and planting more successions to spread harvests out. There were important lessons learnt too: ‘we won’t be propagating our own celeriac. It was incredibly fiddly and the seedlings were very delicate. We’ll still propagate our own celery - but that will go in the market garden which is a more controllable, relatively weed free space where the seedlings stand a chance. Out in the field, the plants have to be pretty tough and strong to survive’. The number one surprise of last year though was not one particular veg - it was the new no-dig beds. Labour-intensive to create but worth every day of the hard work, they were easy to maintain and were MUCH more productive than George had anticipated. In fact, harvests in those beds were up as much as 50% on the previous year: ‘we had no idea how successful they would be. We totally underestimated them’. With his first full no-dig season under his belt, George feels more confident to actually scale BACK on some produce (chard, spinach) and extend the variety he plants in this area: ‘More herbs. Lots more herbs - we’d love to do lots of different bunches all through the summer.’ The team have worked hard over the winter and there are now&nbsp;double&nbsp;the number of no-dig beds (38) which means the amount of chard and spinach harvested will probably be the same as last year, but the planting will be geared more towards variety than quantity.&nbsp;Right now, during the Hungry Gap, when there’s much less to harvest in the fields it’s the perfect time to really make headway and, quite literally, lay the groundwork for this season. George has ordered all the ‘horticultural sundries’ (propagation trays, compost, irrigation tape) and Lottie and Jenny are using every spare moment to sort and sow seeds: ’As soon as the temperature hits around 10 degrees, if we’re ready to plant out then that’s when we stand the best chance of a really successful early harvest’.&nbsp; There are still greens growing in the tunnels over the winter period: ‘We’ve got salads, spinach and chard coming through but the recovery time from harvest to re-growth is weeks rather than days right now’. The first spring harvest will be the fresh garlic around April time which was sown back at the end of October. After that there’ll be broad beans, radishes, early inside courgettes and herbs and then, come July, it will be a rush of produce and the harvesting will start at the crack of dawn and seem never ending!&nbsp; Right now, it’s back to the planning spreadsheets, sowing the (sometimes TINY) seeds into rich compost and nurturing the little delicate seedlings that will grow into this season’s organic veg.

SETTING THE SCENE FOR THE YEAR

The triumphs and challenges of this summer so far ‘It’s been a brutal time for the brassicas these last few weeks but, against the odds, they’ve survived!’&nbsp; Farmers are often accused of moaning about the weather…but I think we can agree, that this early summer has left us all a bit frazzled. The heatwave was intense and George didn’t know how the crops would fare: ‘I like hot weather but that was&nbsp;something else! The issue we have here is lack of field scale irrigation. We can only water small areas at a time with drip tapes that we move manually around the field. It’s impossible to water everything and we just have to hope for the best.’ In fact, most of the veg seem to have bounced back and despite the lack of rain, this year is still (so far) looking good: ‘the chard and leaves were limp after the intense heat but they recovered. The beetroot harvest has been great, potatoes are good, parsnips are looking promising and the market garden crops have all been productive.’&nbsp; Until this prolonged dry spell, rain has come at the right time and the Spring wasn’t too cold or wet so George had a chance to get on top of the planting and weeding while the weather played ball. That preparation is paying off and while the lack of rain is tricky, it’s still manageable (just). Of course, you can’t please every veg and when you grow over 300 different varieties, there will always been some that don’t thrive. This year, that’s the onions and early carrots: ‘they are too dry. The parsnips have a long root tap to source water from deep in the ground, the carrots don’t have quite that advantage and they are a bit skinny at the moment.’ An important crop, George is considering watering the carrots to help them along a bit whereas in general, the veg on the farm are left to find their own moisture -&nbsp;encouraging deep roots and a greater chance of survival in drought conditions or during a record breaking heatwave!&nbsp; The hot weather was actually a good time to get on top of the weeding in the market garden. A job mostly carried out by hand at this time of year, it’s very easy to kill weeds when the sun is out - just pull them up and leave them to die on the surface: ‘even a slight soil distubance will help dry them out’. Conversely, the newly planted brassicas were left ‘weedy’ to try and conserve water. As George explains: ‘ground cover is a good way to keep moisture in and I’ve also been reluctant to remove the nets as they also trap much needed water’. As a result, a peek under the nets show there’s a lot of catch up work to do here but hopefully, these tactics have helped the crops survive.&nbsp; As far as the future goes, this heatwave has given George pause for thought: ‘a week of that heat and we would be in trouble. It’s an eventuality we are going to have to start preparing for: the polytunnels will need proper fans to encourage air flow, the market garden will need shade netting and sooner or later, we will have to address the irrigation issue….but that’s expensive.’ Water security is a very real problem here on the farm and just being able to keep crops alive is not something we can take for granted in the future: ‘We grow our own resiliance here at Sandy Lane with a wide variety of veg. Each year something will fail, there will always be compromises but with a diversity of produce, there will also always be sucesses. However, a lack of water hits across the board.’&nbsp; For now, we’ll enjoy the sweetcorn that has arrived three weeks earlier than last year and the wealth of ripe cherry tomatoes that, due to the efforts of the team, didn’t cook in their polytunnels! Farming is far from predictable: ‘If we had this year’s weather every year then you would know where you stand’. As it is, George will work with what he has - continue to build the soil structure and encourage organic matter under ground and try to ensure that whatever rain we have, goes straight to the crops that need it most.&nbsp;

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