Welcome to the second ‘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 proved a bit tricky this week, with daytime temperatures in the mid-teens and night-time temperatures dipping below freezing. That being said, the cloches appear to be working well - with misting during the day proving evidence of their effectiveness in raising temperatures, and promoting high humidity.
While we don’t have cloches for the rest of the outdoor planters, we did prepare and sow the remainder of these this week. We really should know better by now, but the planters do offer a little more protection than a garden vegetable garden plot or raised bed, as the soil surface is set about 25mm below the top of the container. This at the very least provides seedlings some protection from drying winds and air frosts!
Lamb’s lettuce and American Land cress in Planter 1 have started to be harvested. We have picked only new growth as older leaves are fairly tough, and in the case of American ‘Land Cress’, eye wateringly hot…! The leaves are quite small so picking is a bit fiddly, however, we just about managed to get enough together to garnish a goat’s cheese crostini! We do like the Lamb’s lettuce which is soft and succulent with a nutty flavour, rather more than American Land Cress. The French, which refer to Lambs lettuce as ‘Mache’, treat the plant as something of spring delicacy as anyone who has read Martin Walkers’ Bruno Chief of Police series will know. In these books, the goodies invariably have neat and ordered vegetable patches, while those of the villains are overgrown and unkempt!
Spring Onion ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’ in Planter 2 has continued to improve, with plants straightening up and becoming less reliant on the training system for support. The plants have increased slightly in girth and new growth dark green with dead yellow tips are no longer evident.
The three rockets in Planter 3 show no signs of germination but this isn’t surprising, and it’s likely to take 2 or even 3 weeks so early in the season.
The three radishes in Planter 4 have all germinated, but the rates are mixed being just 40% Radish ‘Diana’ and 60% for Radish ‘Hailstone’. There is a possibility that further seedlings will emerge in the next few days but radishes generally appear in one burst and stragglers are rare! However, poorer germination is to be expected so early in the season when soil temperatures are relatively low, but can be overcome by sowing seed slightly more generously in order to achieve an acceptable level of stocking.
The four planters we use for follow us are a small proportion of the total we have, which is around 60. These are a ‘hangover’ of the crop trials we did before we launched Ergrownomics that we’ve kept largely for our own use. We have 7 planters in a greenhouse, 11 in a full polytunnel, 11 in a vented polytunnel and the remainder, including the 4 planter we use for ‘Follow us’, outdoors. In order the show the greater potential of the planters we are going to show each week crops we’ve grown in these planters and are harvesting. As with ‘Follow us’ what you see is what you get, nothing is manicured nor photoshopped!
This week we are harvesting ‘Spinach ‘Medania’ and Rocket ‘Wild’, both of which have been grown in the vented polytunnel. The spinach has proved especially good and is picked fairly hard twice a week. The rocket is something of an accident as it was sown in late September and whilst it germinated well, it came to nothing. It was left as a bit of a ‘failed endeavour’ only to come to life at the beginning of March. We’ll definitely replicate this next year now that we know it will happily over winter in a near dormant state, as rocket this good in March is something of a rarity. We still find it just a bit too peppery, but it can be reined in with an emulsion of lemon and olive oil as a dressing, or - more simply - blackcurrant vinegar.