We were thankful for the rain on our fields over several days towards the end of May. All the new season’s crops look much better now, and it enabled us to work some more ground and transplant the courgettes and a big block of chard. We’ve had to cover the courgettes temporarily as they don’t like cool, windy weather but they're growing well now. We have lots of new season’s leafy green crops ready now as well as spring onions and green garlic. And our new potatoes will be in our veggie boxes and at our Farmer's Market stalls very soon.
The wet week gave us chance to plant up our polytunnels with summer crops of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and chillies, just small amounts of each but luckily Nash Nursery grow plenty and supply our own box scheme through the summer.
Turtle dove – we’ve just heard the lovely purring of a turtle dove a couple of time so far in May and no images on the trail camera yet but fingers crossed for some soon.
Packaging – a small improvement to our packaging is that we can now get biodegradable tape for the machines we use to fasten together bunches of spring onions and carrots. It should arrive soon.
Provenance – we’ve done the sums and for 2021 the produce in our veggie boxes was 77% home grown (by value). A further 10% was from Kentish organic growers (Nash Nursery and Wye Orchard) with the remaining 13% from other UK and European organic growers (some direct from growers and some via the Better Food Shed, a non-profit ethical London wholesaler that we also supply).
