28th August

At last, the payments are working on the website, now we have had to change card provider, so if you were previously ordering on the website, what you will have to do is cancel your present order and restart a new order as if you are a new customer, then it will work for taking recurring orders, sorry it has taken so long.

With September upon us, it feels like it has been a very quick summer.

And the first sign in the changing season, is that every morning when we go out to harvest, we need wellies and waterproof trousers, the dry morning harvesting has finished for the year.

Even without any rain, all the field crops at seven in the morning are wet, and they do not dry up until around nine am.

With the change in the seasons all the over winter brassicas are now at full high and foliage.

Over the next three to four months the proper winter crops will start to fill out.

One of those is the Brussel sprouts, they are now about waist hight, with lots of wee Brussels on their stalks.

The February harvesting savoy cabbage has enormous leaves, and will start to hearten up and hopefully sit through the winter, all depending how severe a frost we get.

The kale this year is enormous and the red cabbage which we usually struggle to grow looks like it will be the best that we have ever grown.

The most surprising thing about all of this, is that they were all planted just before we had the two months of zero rain and temperatures around 20 and above, and they survived, plus they were under fleece, to save them from the pigeon on slot.

It all goes to show how hardy plants can be if they can get their roots fixed, and get off to a start.

Inside the tunnels this year I had direct sowed a dwarf French bean, just as a trial.

We have grown beans in the past, but the time involved in putting posts in and stringing them up, was very time consuming.

The beans I sowed only grow to just over a foot in hight, and are more like a bush, no stringing up, and they are fantastic.

The only issue being, they are a nightmare to harvest, and harvesting takes forever.

But the crop is amazing, and they put nitrogen back into the soil.

So next year we will dedicate a whole tunnel to this crop, great harvesting, and fantastic for the soil.