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Planning our organic vegetable production begins with the
previous crop for the chosen field which has to build up its natural fertility.
Clover-based pastures are sown and used for to feed the dairy cows for
three years before being ploughed up to grow the vegetables. Some of the
area – that used
for brassicas, onions and leeks – will also have composted farmyard
manure applied before ploughing in February.
Winter is also the time to plan the areas of each vegetable
and to place the seed and plant orders with specialist organic suppliers.
Varieties which grow well under organic conditions and which consumers
like are selected. Some vegetables need to be transplanted after being
raised in a greenhouse and they arrive at the farm as 12-week old seedlings
grown in sectional trays or "modules". We grow our swede, cabbage,
cauliflower, onions, leeks and early lettuce from these modules. We order
our carrots, beetroot, parsnip, radish, parsley, coriander and main lettuce
crop as seeds.
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This is the time for land work to prepare the soil for planting.
All of our vegetables are grown in long "beds" which are 1.5
metres wide and each contain 3 rows of vegetables.
These beds are rotavated
and de-stoned to provide the fine seedbed which we need to ensure good
plant establishment. The modules are planted with a tractor mounted gripper
planter on which three people feed the individual plants from trays into
the machine. The beds are checked afterwards and loose plants secured and
any misses replaced. The other vegetable seeds are sown with a Stanhay
precision drill where a rubber perforated belt delivers each seed into
its row.
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Much of the summer is spent weeding the beds and planting successive crops
of lettuce, carrots and radish to ensure a continuous harvest into the autumn.
Weeding is the most important task as the vegetables can soon become swamped
in a system which does not use any form of herbicide. A front-mounted tractor
hoe is used weekly to hoe between the rows but the weeds within the rows
need to be removed manually until the vegetable plants are strong enough
to compete.
Harvest begins in mid-August for some of the early seasonal vegetables such
as lettuce, radish, potatoes, parsley, carrots and summer cabbage.
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This is the main harvest season with a full selection of
vegetables picked to order on a weekly basis. Some of the vegetables remain
in the ground – the
brassicas, leeks, beetroot and the carrots (which we cover with straw to
protect from frost). These are harvested by hand as required with the leeks,
parsnips and carrots undercut with a tractor-mounted bar to save manual digging.
Even so lifting these and picking the brassicas in the cold or wet is not
a job for the faint hearted! Onions and potatoes are lifted in bulk and stored
in a cool dark building.
The maincrop potatoes are lifted in mid-October
and stored in large boxes kept frost-free but below 5oC to prevent
chitting. The onions are also topped, dried and brought into the store in
trays for the winter. In this way vegetables are available to supply the
box scheme until around mid-March.
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