Welcome to the first ‘Follow Us’ update of 2021, a space where we talk about how we’re growing in our own Ergrownomics raised planters this year, and walk you through how you can achieve the same results at home, yourself...Feel free to follow along, and be sure to follow us on Instagram & Facebook to never miss an update!
We thought we’d get an early start on ‘Follow us’ this year, now that we’ve finally designed and manufactured a cloche. The cloche is intended to increase the length of the season by bringing forward the earliest sowing date for outdoor planting by about a month (for Herefordshire, at least). Cloches were fitted to containers 3 and 4 (of the four available on our Four Planter) at the beginning of March, and over the last few weeks have allowed the soils within the containers to dry and warm-up, which (in-turn) allowed the cultivation and preparation of a fine seed bed, this week! We’ve taken the opportunity to add a couple of litres of mature home-made green-waste compost to bolster organic-matter levels this year, and to replace nutrients used in the course of last year’s cropping (and lost by leaching over winter).
Planter 1 contains Lamb’s lettuce and American ‘Land’ cress which were sown on the 18th September, 2020, while Planter 2 contains ‘White Lisbon winter-hardy’ spring onion, which was sown on the 25th September, 2020. All have survived intact throughout the winter, coping with temperatures as low as minus 7oC, but without actually having grown at all! This changed at the beginning of March when we fitted cloches to these planters. New growth was evident in just a couple of days, along with a marked improvement in colour. The spring onions had suffered some wind damage with a number prone (lying flat) to the soil surface, but this was corrected by carefully fitting of the training system, and by lifting and placing the spring onions between the training lines.
Options for sowing in March are a bit limited because low temperatures inhibit germination and tender seedlings are susceptible to frost damage, but these risks are substantially reduced by use of a cloche. Notwithstanding this, it still makes sense to plant crops that favour cooler “spring conditions”, and we’ve opted to plant radish and rocket. One of our goals this year is to produce a wide range of pestos as these taste so much better when made from fresh, home-grown produce, and both rocket and radish tops are great for this purpose!
As we are growing the radish as much for the tops as the bulbs, we’ve decided to try a few alternative varieties (all of which are globe shaped). We’ve gone for ‘Diana’ which has a dark purple top and white base, ‘Hailstone’ which is white, and ‘Scarlet globe’ which is red (who knew...!). Whether these are any better than ‘Poloneza’ and ‘Cherry Belle’, which are our ‘go to’ globe varieties for early Spring sowing, we’ll find out - and we’ve sown both in a nearby planter in order to be able to compare…
In this spirit, we’ve applied the same daring to our choice of rocket, particularly as neither of our normal choices are ideal. Wild rocket has a pepperiness which is a bit too strong, especially in older leaves (and it bolts far too readily), while Salad rocket is a bit insipid and - despite claims to the contrary - is still prone to bolting. The alternatives we are trying are ‘Wasabi Arugula’, which combines rocket and wasabi flavours (we are expecting it to be good with raw fish), ‘Ruccola Colitivata’ which has a strong rocket flavour even as baby leaf, and ‘Wild Adventurer’. The latter is considered to be one of the best cultivars for flavour and texture, with the added attraction of also being resistant to bolting. While this is grown commercially, we thought it would be worth a try to judge just how much better home-grown is than shop-bought!
Our philosophy in choosing crops to grow in our planters is to grow each crop-variety just once per season at the optimum time, rather than as a succession (but the latter does have merit and is still perfectly practical in a planter!) Individual planting rows can be re-sown once vacated, and there is absolutely no need to wait for harvesting across a whole container to be completed, beforehand. This is because the training system prevents interference and suppression from the more mature crops alongside.
In choosing crops, we do like to think ahead and know what we are going to use the crops for; to this end, there’s usually one recipe that stands out in our minds! This undoubtedly increases our investment in maintaining our raised garden, and creates a sense of excitement that doesn’t seem to diminish as we start growing in a new year! Here’s to Spring 2021 being a little less exciting than in 2020…