Planting and sowing

March is always a busy time for getting new crops established. It's warm enough, light levels are good and there's still moisture in the soil. On these sandy soils you have to get most things established early in the year, letting them get their roots down to tap in to that moisture lower down in the soil profile. A dry spell later on in the year can cause big problems for new crops.

The early potatoes have come up and are now covered in fleece to keep them warmer - but they haven't made as much progress as I would have liked, so fingers crossed for some mild temperatures, sun and moisture to get them going fast.

Euonymous hedges are all looking wonderfully green at the moment and have incredibly vigorous growth. Makes you think about the power of perennials over annuals - they get started so much earlier as a rule...

Signs of spring

The last few days have felt really mild and there are definite signs that spring is on its way. The Euonymous hedges are showing fresh green shoots, the birds are starting to sing in a different, more spring like way, and more flowers are appearing.

Gorse is flowering all over the place at the moment, in two weeks' time it's going to be a really good show. Cultivated Narcissi have been flowering in fields since November, but the cast offs that lie in field margins, abandoned fields and hedges (so not subject to any special treatment) are coming in to their own now.

'Soleil d'Or' are the single most famous flower from Scilly and have a beautiful colour and scent unlike anything else.

On the land it's been a time for cultivation and establishment. Today white clover and Westerwolds rye went in, just before rain tomorrow afternoon. In the morning the second batch of carrots will be drilled (sown), and the first batch of peas and beans. More potatoes are due to to go in very soon.

In the glasshouse lettuce, peas, salads, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, chard, kale and much more have all been sown. Sowing will be quite regular from now until about July to ensure a continuity of crops right through the year.

So the growing year is in full swing already...more on progress before long.

Painting the stall

Today has been sunny, dry and mild - a good day for painting the veg stall in Middle Town. A fresh coat of paint, a job I normally hate. But I am using Auro paint, a plant-based, non-toxic mix of oils, resins and colours that smells of citrus! It's made a good coverage and I'm very pleased with it. A pleasure to work with.



















Winter on Scilly can be beautiful, as this photo from today, looking over towards Tresco, demonstrates.

In praise of kale

Kale, Brassica oleracea, is a seriously good versatile crop. It comes in lots of different leaf shapes, colours and textures, from the wonderfully indented, dark and tasty Calvo Nero/Nero di Tosacno (see left) to the lovely purple-veined and vigorous Red Russian and the very green and curly Pentland Brig.

It tolerates a lot of cold, yet grows fast in the summer too. Growers like it particularly because it keeps producing leaves up the stem. You just pick the older leaves lower down, leaving the newer younger leaves to carry on growing. It's not uncommon for a kale plant to be still cropping 8 months after the first picking!

There are fewer more nutritious crops than Brassicas. They contain a range of vitamins (E and B complexes), carotenes, vitamin C and some protein.

Snow comes to Scilly

So the weather has changed from mild and stormy to cold, cold, cold. Of
course the entire country is pretty frozen but it's unusual to get snow
on Scilly that settles.

Today it snowed and settled, though appears to be slushy and will melt
without too much encouragement. Nonetheless it's covered all the fields,
leaving me finding it difficult to locate those cabbage, kale and
beetroot that I need to find to pick tomorrow!

Seaweed, gales and rain

As I'm writing it's dark, windy and wet outside. We've seen a lot of wind recently, last week some gusts of 60mph and a fair amount of rain too. Autumn is in full swing and throwing it's worst at us.

There is one bonus - it means the seaweed is coming in nice and thick on the beaches. Each year we use in the order of 200 tons of the stuff to improve the soil and provide fertility for next years crops.

It sounds a lot, which it is, but this soon rots down to a fraction of its fresh bulk. We use a combination of foreloader and trailer to haul the 'weed off the beach, tip it out on the fields and spread it to a layer between 6 inches and 1 foot thick. This will rot down with the autumn and winter rains; after about 8-10 weeks it'll be rotavated in to the soil.

So far we've got about 100 tons up (30 of this done with a pitchfork and trailer!), so about another 100 to go. Judging by the forecast there won't be a shortage of seaweed around yet!

The harvest month

September tends to be a good month for growers...a more relaxed time and a chance to literally savour the fruits of our labours.

As the evenings draw out the sun still has some warmth and the clarity of light is often much better than the warmer summer months. Young swallows are cramming in flying lessons, preparing to fly south for the winter, leaving us until next spring.

There's an abundance of crops, including:

• Spuds
• Squash
• Peas
• Tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Basil
• Mixed salad
• Beetroot
• Onions
• Calabrese
• Kale
• Cabbage
• Peppers
• Melons
• Leeks
• Parsley
• Mint
• Spinach

The stall will stay open for a bit yet, though by the end of October there will be very few visitors about to buy anything, so we will close. Then the work starts to plan for next year when, of course, everything will be better and nothing will go wrong!!