Whitsend Market Garden

Another tough year, all the more disappointing as we were off to such a good start.  

Customers who have been with us for a couple of years would have noticed that the spring harvest was larger than usual - that is the standard I have been hoping to achieve since our third season.  The spinach in particular was off to a great start, with new varieties being trialed and some new knowledge to improve germinating and growing techniques.

At the end of May, the "event" upset the entire production plan, as I went into disaster mitigation and worked to build new beds for squash and potato crops.  

As these two crops are a significant part of our share value (not to mention the effort already put into these crops) and the fact that both are much anticipated by our customers, I had no choice but to begin the time consuming task of breaking new ground and building beds from scratch.  

A week later, I was able to return to the field and tried in vain to get back on track but the spring growth of weeds was well established and i soon found myself stuck in what I call "the weeding cycle".

As discussed elsewhere in this blog, the techniques I have been trained with eliminate most weeding for most of the season - I cultivate the beds instead on a weekly basis and can cover a lot of ground in a couple of hours.

So the result is a lot of time spent trying to keep our growing crops from being choked and missing some little details such as keeping the nursery temperature moderated with regularly replaced well water.  Not very satisfying for a detail oriented person such as myself. Nonetheless, I refuse to give up...

A very uninspiring picture to start the blog with. Three piles of compost.  This is the main ingredient I put into the soil to promote soil fertility, which in turn provides the crops with everything they need to produce our food.

Here is a photograph of three successions of green beans.  At the top of the picture are the beans we are just starting to deliver; these were planted in early June.

These will probably finish in about two weeks; the next round of beans should be ready by then.

The third round of beans is about two weeks old, and should be ready by early September.

At some point during these bean successions, our crop of romano  beans will also start producing pods. Probably fairly soon, judging by these first flowers.

The romano's are a new crop for Whitsend, a request by one of our customers from last year.

When trying new crops for the first time, I typically grow smaller quantities so that I can reduce the risk of a disappointing crop.  In this instance, I am growing one bed of romano's compared with the two maxi beans.






The red leaf crop is amaranth.  I started to experiment with this crop a couple of years ago while trying to find a dependable mid-summer crop that tolerates heat.















One of the most prolific crops i have ever worked with - zucchini's.

Last year's zuchini crop was disappointing. There were several factors, but one possibility was that the goldy zucchini variety was not as prolific as I had hoped.

As I hadd two other zucchini to try this year, I opted to use up the last of the goldy seed.

Next year, they well be replaced by a variety called Cocozelle.







Delicata squash are one of the most prized by chefs for its flavour.

Their rind is thin enough to eat, the plants are relatively trouble free, and fairly compact compared to many winter squashes,

Their only drawback is that they are not quite so long lasting in winter storage.










Potatoes in flower.  The flowers will produce a tomato like fruit full of seeds.  Meanwhile, the plant produces tubers as a second means of reproducing.

 The onions are in their final weeks of growth.  As the days start getting shorter, the plant takes this cue and starts to put more emphasis on growing bulbs for storing nutrients.

If left in the ground, the leaves would die back over the winter and remain dormant until spring.  Then, using the nutrients stored in the bulb, the plant would send up a flower stalk and eventually produce seed.










The fennel doesn't wait a season.  It stores it's nutrients in the bulb as well, but will develop it;s seed stalk in the same year it is planted.

The tomato plants desperately needing their second pruning.

This encourages more fruit set, as well as allowing sunlight to get to the fruits and hasten their ripening.













Red amaranth, white nicotiania, and yellow primrose.  The primrose and nicotiania  grew from seed left by the last year's flowers.  Several amaranth seeds also germinated on their own, but as the amaranth is slower growing,m I always start a few in the nursery to allow it a head start.

Otherwise, the nicitiania and primrose would choke the amaranth.

The finished product.  This edition of the blog (and the subject of this photograph) started as compost.

A typical early summer delivery, other than beans and peas showing up in the same delivery week.