Cold spring, slow crops, new glasshouse

This spring has been one of the coldest I've known in 10 years of growing. Following the excessively wet winter. Valentines Day brought very welcome dry weather, but after this the temperatures were lower than through Dec and Jan. Crops haven't been growing at all and even plants in the glasshouse have been growing slowly.

March brought unsettled conditions and recently there has been a lot of rain (again). It's been really challenging to get everything going to schedule and the fact is crops will be later than planned.

On the positive side, we've been busy building a new glasshouse and tool shed. It's not quite finished but nearly there. It'll be a great addition to the farm and make life a lot easier.

It's been a lovely day today (after morning rain stopped) - here's Lawrence's beach.

Rotavating for early crops

It's turned a bit colder now but the forecast indicates it won't last on Scilly for too long. Now is the time to prepare for early spuds and carrots, turning in seaweed, green manures and weeds, ready for the new season's crops.

The growing year of 2013 has started!

Seaweed hauling has started

Thanks to some strong northerlies last week a nice bit of seaweed has been coming in to Great Bay and Little Bay. This has been taken down to Lawrences on to the patch intended for early spuds. About 25 tonnes hauled, only another 150 or so to go!

Who needs a tractor?

When you can transport all your veg home in a wheelbarrow?!
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September photos

The time of autumn crops! Squash and sweetcorn are coming on nicely and with this lovely warm weather they should carry on doing so. This is like the summer we never had!

A barrow of beetroot...

...can't be a bad thing!

Case study

I recently completed a case study about my business with the SWARM project at Duchy College.

Here you can read in more depth about the growing system I've created and some wider issues on soil, water and carbon emissions.
http://www.scillyorganics.com/files/Scilly_Organics_case_study.pdf