WEEK 1 WEEK 2 WEEK 3 WEEK 4 WEEK 5 WEEK 6 WEEK 7 WEEK 8 WEEK 9 WEEK 10
Welcome to the eleventh ‘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! As usual, key is at the bottom, so scroll down now!
The weather has finally improved this week, with temperatures edging back to the seasonal average of 160C (they still haven’t quite made it at 140C) and long periods of unbroken sunshine. Any showers have been short lived, although still very heavy!
‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ in Planter 1 has grown well this week, and will be ready for light picking shortly. The mix is full of varieties with different colours and leaf shape but quite how these translate in terms of taste…well, we’ll find out next week!
We have harvested the last of the Spring Onion ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’ which over-wintered in Planter 2 without any protection whatsoever, and proves its reputation of the variety as being especially hardy. The onions tasted great too and were neither to mild nor to strong; better still, this didn’t change while the onions stood while being harvested.
Carrot ‘Imperator mix’ has now been sown in Planter 2 but we have added to the mix some Carrot ‘Purple Haze’ as our experience is that this mix is dominated by white and yellow carrots (and that we rarely ever see a purple one)! Even orange ones can be a bit sparse sometimes… We have found carrots from the ‘Imperator’ family (a cross between ‘Nantes’ and ‘Chantenay’ carrots) to grow well in the planters at what is very close spacing (16 per row), and to root to the full 350 mm soil depth.
Lettuce ‘Green Salad Bowl’, ‘Red Salad Bowl’ and ‘Oak Leaf Green’ in Planter 3 will be ready for harvesting at the end of this week, with the lettuces starting to infill the gaps between the rows. Notwithstanding this, we have started some selective picking of the ‘Red Salad Bowl’ which has proved to be the fastest of the three, and clearly benefitted from the absence of full sun which seems to ‘bleach’ its colour.
Dwarf French bean ‘Speedy’ in Planter 4 is yet to germinate with no evidence yet of any soil upheaval at the surface (which is a tell-tale sign of life below). As always, it’s a waiting game but the soils are retaining some warmth, for now at least.
The ‘Star of the show’ this week is Kohl Rabi ‘Olivia’. We grow this in the vented polytunnel as it’s a brassica and suffers a lot of caterpillar damage outdoors. The plants were thinned last week and almost instantly started to bulb up which highlights the importance of spacing in getting the most from the crops. We normally get a bit of incidental damage to the leaves but on this occasion, they are unblemished. We’ll come back to these when they are ready for picking which is always a highlight (they taste great with hard goat’s cheese and rose scented thyme!)