WEEK 1 WEEK 2 WEEK 3 WEEK 4 WEEK 5 WEEK 6 WEEK 7 WEEK 8 WEEK 9 WEEK 10 WEEK 11 WEEK 12 WEEK 13 WEEK 14 WEEK 15 WEEK 16 WEEK 17 WEEK 18 WEEK 19 WEEK 20
Welcome to the twenty-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! As usual, key is at the bottom, so scroll down now!
The weather has continued to be mostly dry and sunny this week, although colder than expected with daytime temperatures falling to 20oC, and night-time temperatures to 100C (both of which are below the seasonal average by 2-30C).
‘French’ (broad-leaved) sorrel in Planter 1 has responded well to respacing, with no losses amongst the seedlings which were pricked out. We refitted the cloche for a couple of days, having watered the plants beforehand to ensure we achieved high humidity. This seems to have been really successful in minimising stress. The plants are growing well with the leaf in good condition. As a point of note, ‘French’ sorrel is supposed to be light green and slightly translucent!
The 'Red-veined' sorrel has finally germinated but very sporadically. Almost all the seedlings to have emerged are located on the right-hand side of the planter, with few in the centre and none to the left. We really can’t think of an explanation why we would have ended up with this distribution, other than possibly the thickness of the compost dressing placed over the seeds? Notwithstanding this, we’ve ended up with 18 seedlings - which should be just enough to achieve a meaningful crop if we are careful with the pricking out and respacing.
Carrot ‘Imperator mix’ in Planter 2 continues to impress but we haven’t seen much height growth in the foliage for the last couple of weeks (so suspect the carrots are starting to ‘girth up’ below ground). We did have a little bit of a hunt around and the carrots seem to be about 10mm in girth, which is reasonable for 10 weeks. However, we’d expect a 50% increase over the next three weeks before we start harvesting them at the end of August! This will give us just enough time to get a winter lettuce crop established through the early autumn if we start the plants off as root-trainers.
Growth of the four basils in Planter 3 has definitely slowed down since we removed the cloche, but this has at least halted the advance of Cercospora leaf spot infection. We have continued our slightly ‘out of left field’ approach to picking, uprooting whole seedlings as and when required to gradually thin the plants! This is working really well as it means we’ve (in effect) been harvesting the plants just four weeks after sowing; it’s also less wasteful as the stems are tender enough to chop and include with the leaves (and it avoids damage caused by picking to remaining plants). We have admittedly found it slightly hard to keep up as a single container grows a very large amount of basil, however, if we get too far behind we’ll just make a big batch of pesto! We haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the differences in flavour between the basils as all are extremely aromatic and head and shoulders better than shop-bought. Notwithstanding this, if we did have to choose then it would be ‘Mrs Burns’, which has been the most vigorous and somehow manages to be more lemony than even ‘Lemon’ basil!
The dwarf French bean ‘Speedy’ in Planter 4 has continued to be harvested and the quality of the beans is outstanding. These definitely boil better than ‘Purple Teepee’ and take less than 5 minutes to cook through. The beans are not prone to absorb water and remain firm, but without the risk of their being ‘squeaky’ when you eat them (which is as painful as running fingernails down a blackboard to certain members of our family!) The beans are brilliant with ‘French tarragon’, which we devote a whole container to in our vented tunnel. This is slightly gratuitous but it is our favourite herb!
Our star of the show this week is Cucumber ‘Marketmore’ which has produced a really good crop of cucumbers in our vented polytunnel (and far earlier than usual). The cucumbers have tiny thorns on their skin and a far denser flesh than shop-bought, making them brilliant for pickling (because they contain far more fibre and less water). We follow a really easy Sarah Raven recipe that’s sweet and tangy!