Our plans for the year
The rain is doing its best to disrupt our plans (and those of every grower and gardener in the area). But we do have plans! And we’re very excited to share them with the community.
2024 will be all about getting the farm up and running. There’s a lot of infrastructure to put in, soil to develop and systems to create. Excitingly we’ve just received delivery of our two new polytunnels! If we can get the funding we will also be putting in a car park and a packing shed this year. Here’s our site plan (which has been approved by the council):
We’ll have four beds under cultivation this year, as well as the two polytunnels. In line with our growing philosophy, we’ll be growing a huge diversity of crops across those 6 locations - 82 different varieties in total! This diversity helps with resilience as if conditions aren’t right for one variety, they will be for another. It also means that there should always be something new to try.
Dave has prepared lots of spreadsheets detailing exactly what we’ll be growing - there’s a lot of complexity to manage! In our most developed beds on the east side we’ll be doing three sowings - the broad beans and garlic are already in, and we’ll soon be transplanting brassicas. There’s a lot of green manure (GM) in our rotations which we use to keep the soil healthy and cycle nutrients.
The polytunnels will have mostly tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, fennel and courgettes.
With your help, we’ll be supplying around 15 boxes this year, from around June. The boxes will be seasonal so at first they’ll be mostly salads and herbs with mange tout, summer cabbage and beetroot. As the year continues we’ll add tomatoes, cucumbers, root veg and squashes. And of course our produce will also be available at the Crunchy Carrot.
If you are interested in a box, and haven’t already told us so, please do get in touch and let us know where you live and how many people are in your household. Exciting times! If you’d like to know more about our growing plans do write and let us know…
