We know that at this time of the year, you like to sit down with seed catalogues and dream about the perfect year that is ahead of us.

I also have to try and work out what the seed merchants actually mean by…’tremendous flavour’. Or ‘very prolific’.  If you get tremendous flavour, you usually get only a few plants.  If it’s very prolific, the taste is usually rubbish.  It’s important to read between the lines. 

I have many favourites, but you shouldn’t really ‘just’ grow your favourites, you should always try new varieties because some things will be better. The whole point of the seed industry is to develop seeds that grow much better, are more prolific, flavoursome, beautiful looking, easy to grow, drought resistant, bred for the UK environment (which means what now…?).  There are seed companies that are growing to be more resistant to drought, but there are not many companies that are growing plants which are much more suited to wet environments, 

So you’ve got your seed catalogues out, you’re reading between the lines and you’re having fun imagining the perfect year. 

I start with the crop rotation. I work out what plots, what size plots I’ve got and that pretty much determines how many of each variety I can buy.  This year we had a massive plot for brassicas, so I bought a lot of brassicas.  Next year, there’ll be a few more brassicas planted at Matfen, with a smaller plot at Ovington. Also, we’re planning on growing more perennials at Matfen, like a larger crop of artichokes, Dauberton Kale, Welsh onions and green garlic.  Having worked out the crop rotation and size of beds I can roughly work out how many rows and then basically we plan to have two to three crops for each row for the season. And over-sow for any extras I can fit in

Given that we have this crazy weather, and it seems to get more crazy, and given that we’ve been growing for over 10 years – how do we that translate that into next years plans?  

One of the opportunities for next year comes as a result of having two or three new people who are experienced growers.  One is going to focus on a saladbed with things like perilla, amaranth different kinds of textile greens, different kinds of lettuces, radicchio, radicchio, endives… we’ll hopefully have a better mix.  Another is a keen herb grower so we you might see a re-introduction of that wide range of herbs we once had.  Each year we have to look at the combination of skills in the team, along with the machinery, tools, the labour available, the budget, and of course the requests from the members.

The seed catalogues are still open, decisions and choices still to be finalised, more work to be done on the detail for next year. Watch this space!