December sunshine

The weather's always like this in December!
A few from today and sunset two days ago...

Carbon footprint

Being winter, we're in the mood for doing indoor jobs and all the things
that have been put off in the summer. Now this one, calculating the
carbon footprint of the business is a year behind schedule, which is
pretty tardy by most standards!

But better late than never, here is the carbon footprint of Scilly
Organics in 2015. Once again we have calculated that far more carbon has
been absorbed on the farm than is emitted by all other activities. So
buying vegetables from us is a really carbon positive thing! If you want
to look at the detail go straight to this link:
http://www.scillyorganics.com/uploads/2/4/6/3/24630537/our_carbon_footprint_2015.pdf

Now, on to the 2016 carbon footprint...promise it'll be done in the next
month, as soon as the soil organic matter test results come back. Let's
see how the farm has fared this year...

Peaches

A fairly recent addition to the polytunnel is a couple of peach trees.
These were actually grown from seed by taking some organic white peach
stones and putting them in some compost in the glasshouse.

They were planted a couple of years ago and this year had fruit for the
very first time. Not many, only six fairly small peaches, but the
result...delicious!

We're hoping this is a sign of better things to come and look forward to
bountiful crops of St Martin's peaches in years to come.

Sweet clover

Sweet clover is grown as a green manure - to suppress weeds, fix
nitrogen and build organic matter in the soil. It's an amazing plant,
growing really tall and producing masses of yellow or white flowers that
bees and other insects love.

This field has plants that are in excess of 7ft tall and show no signs
of stopping yet! They also have very deep roots, which is ideal on our
sandy soils. Searching for water deep down, they are also bringing up
minerals and nutrients from lower down in the soil profile.

Next spring we will gently cultivate this field and all the organic
matter in this crop will give a massive benefit to the following crop.

Staff training

In the current climate of a lack of skilled labour for farms, we decided
it would be a good policy to invest in new staff from an early age.
Hopefully the time invested in training now will pay dividends in years
to come. We also thought it would be good to start now because in a few
years the unhelpful concept of 'school' will somewhat get in the way of
practical training.

Organic growing is certainly a long term business....

Stunning colours today

The spring continues to bring cold winds, but today also brought amazing visibility and stunning colours. Scilly at its best!

Some photos from the glashouse

The centre of operations is full of lovely looking little plants. The
season is well and truly in swing!