Ian, one of our two resident horticulturists at Go Local Food, has put together a wonderful summary of all the growing news and happenings at our fields at Ovington. We always welcome any questions or feedback of your experiences and very happy to share our journey with you. We hope you are enjoying your summer.
We finally got the potatoes in, having decided not to grow quite so many this year we’ve only planted 1.125km. Our intention is to harvest all the potatoes at the end of October and store rather than trying to lift when the ground is wet or frozen.
Ground preparation is ongoing with the soil going from wet and sticky to dusty and baked clay within the space of a week or so tactics and methods have had to be adjusted almost overnight.
Equally challenging is the massive variation of temperature between day and night. 21 degrees in the day down to 2 or 3 degrees at night. We’ve had chard and spinach in beds for 6 weeks and they’ve hardly grown, in contrast, the indoor spinach and chard are romping away so fast we can’t keep up with it. It won’t be a problem next week as the tomatoes peppers cucumbers and French beans will have taken their place.
The outdoor broad beans are growing exceptionally well so far this year.
The high temperatures and dry weather is starting to affect the overwintered onions causing some to bolt to seed, not a problem as we’ll be getting them in the crop share as green onions.
Last week we also lifted the first half of our indoor salad potatoes which gave me the opportunity to make my favourite early summer dish – hot crushed potato and green onion salad; so easy to make.
Wash the salad potatoes, warm through until just soft (steaming is best). While they are cooking finely chop a green onion and make a mayonnaise. When the potatoes are just soft enough crush gently then fold in the chopped onion. Allow to cool a little then fold in the mayonnaise.
I’m not sure if it tastes better cold as its never made it that far!
While the sun is blazing away, and we are kept on our toes keeping the young plants watered our thoughts turn to sowing the winter crops. Now is the right time to sow the Christmas veg particularly the brassicas such as sprouts kale cauliflower and red cabbages. On top of that we need to keep the successional sowings on track such as radish lettuce turnips and beetroot.
