The joy of seasons – in the market garden

As we tip past the summer solstice it feels as if spring was but a punctuation between winter and summer, with cold days, even colder nights and rains that kept our tractor firmly in the shed!  The slow start to the year has been a challenge in the market garden but hey, the unpredictable conditions is part of why we do this, to be out in mother nature, to feel the changes to seasons and to experience everything the outside world has to offer us. Life would be boring if it was always the same.  However, the cooler than average temperatures and prolonged wet spells earlier in the year have kept us on our toes. Poor germination rates on our direct sown crops including beetroots and spring onions; trays of baby plants waiting in the tunnel for the opportune conditions to go out safe in the knowledge that they will be big enough to survive slug attacks (to which our first cabbages fell foul); and the need to regroup and adjust our crop plan to adapt to a continually changing picture. Working with plants and nature is an education, one that I’m grateful for and that will never end!

Our year began with the construction of another no dig garden, consisting of fourteen 20 metre long beds, lovingly (and painstakingly!) built by hand using wonderful, well composted cow manure from our neighbour, Phil, travelling only 200m or so to reach its destination.  Now that the days are long and the temperatures more comfortable, we’re really beginning to see the benefits of the new garden with parsley, fennel, beetroot, new potatoes, celeriac and carrots all looking very happy in their Wick street farm substrate. The first no dig garden is, this year, largely dedicated to salad with a tapestry of six varieties of lettuce and their supporting actors which make up the salad mix like viola, amaranth and shungiku to name a few.

The tunnels are visibly changing on a daily basis. The firm favourites of tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and basil have been joined by some newcomers this year including cucamelons, cape gooseberries and mangetout all growing noticeably every few days. This is complimented by an approach to include more green manures and leave more plants, or so called ‘weeds.’ These are left to grow on the fringes of the tunnels and in some cases amongst the crops.  Amaranth, for example, offered us a self seeded ground cover for the beans from plants left to go to seed at the end of last season. Keeping roots in the ground, green over the soil and the added edible benefit allowing us to pick a few leaves for the salad mix.  This approach keeps the ground much greener and provides food for insects and therefore a variety of birds, which regularly swoop through for an insect-based snack, adding charm and a joyful audio track to mornings harvesting.

How quickly things move and change, it feels like yesterday that our nursery propagation benches were buckling under the weight of baby plants, many of whom have graduated to the hardening off station situated just outside our propagation tunnel and even more who have flown the nest and put down roots in the wider environment of the market garden we love. And with that comes the start of veg bags! It feels like it’s long overdue but we have to work with and respond to the world around us, align with its rhythms, not create our own. That is the way we’ll create systems that benefit the environment around us….which we are part of, not separate from.

Stuart Greenaway