Saturday 16 September 2017

Topped the tunnel beds with a fresh layer of home made compost.



Wednesday 13 September 2017

Corn Smut

Some of our sweetcorn has Corn Smut (fungus), also known as corn truffles. It won't win many prizes for looks but has a lovely mushroomy sweetcorn flavour and is apparently quite sought after in some countries. Once cooked this lot topped toasted open cheese and tomato sandwiches.




Tuesday 5 September 2017

Radicchio Palla Rossa

Radicchio. Brushed the hearts with olive oil before cooking on a griddle, the main dish is a gratin of onion, potato, celeriac, beetroot and courgette with cheddar, brie and wholemeal breadcrumbs. 




Tuesday 29 August 2017

Flowers

The sunflowers are self set.







Statice hanging in the barn to dry.


Friday 25 August 2017

Wednesday 16 August 2017

No dig potato update

Apart from a few volunteer Kiflis that have been left to grow, all the spuds are now lifted. 
Some were planted under leaves and some under wood chips.

Pro's of using leaves
Easy to mound up
Easy to harvest (also easy to furtle about for early tubers as they became large enough) 
Tubers were quite clean

Cons of leaves
In windy conditions leaves needed holding down with chicken wire until the canopy had grown
More slug damage than normal

Pros of using wood chips
Easy to mound up
Relatively easy to furtle (compared to soil)
Easy to harvest 

Cons of wood chips
More scab 
Chips mixing with soil as tubers were lifted
(Starting with better decomposed chippings would probably reduce the downsides).







Tuesday 1 August 2017

Tunnel Update

Cucumbers every day, peppers look promising and the toms are going strong.



Palermo peppers, grown from seed saved earlier from supermarket peppers.