A trip out to Jekka's Herb Farm

Yesterday I navigated the numerous junctions of the Bristol Ring Road and hastened a short distance northwards to an open day at Jekka's Herb Farm. Jekka has been growing organic herbs really very well for what seems like forever and has just won a 13th gold medal at Chelsea Flower Show. It's a mail order nursery but has two sets of open days a year one, around about nowish and one at the end of the summer.

My reason for going was to stock up on some organic herbs to use as foliage, plants like mint ( I bought 7 different varieties) will do really well on our damp, heavy soil and hopefully will spread vigorously and produce lots of aromatic leaves and pretty flowers.

I was trying to be disciplined in choosing herbs only suited to my purpose but I succumbed to an irresistibly beautiful cream coloured French Lavender It would hate to be planted up at the farm so I'll put it in a pot and gaze adoringly at it.

Jo x

The times, they are a'rainin' . . . . .

Went to water and 'weed' this morning, and all's in-one piece, thank the lord (or lady) of your choice. I was worried yesterday evening with the warm sun which expands the skin on the tunnels all day, then the winds then get under the extra flappage; these were the incoming booms of yesterdays post. I pushed a hoe about for an hour, like a sullen janitor being teased by his unruly class of Docks, then came away to get ready for another week away (and those weeds so recently disturbed, shaking their roots, climbed happily back into the soil to start sledging the Cornflowers all over again)

Definitions of nutter on the Web:

A foolishly insane person, but one who is generally harmless. Also, a person may be called a nutter if they have done or are planning to do ...
www.rebeccarose.info/about_british_and_american_slang.htm

An insane person (as in "you're nuts").
www.hkfilm.net/terms3.htm

JP x

Red Sky at Night; We're in for a fright . .

Big, booming easterlies are pounding the farm, like artillery before the rain comes over the top. I wonder if we'll get any sleep tonight?
Right, that's the last time I'm working away for a week (err, until tomorrow that is) What'll I find when I come back next time?

Definitions of optimist on the Web:

a person disposed to take a favorable view of things
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The Optimist is a small, single-crew sailing dinghy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist (dinghy

JP x

Growing Organic

I realised when weeding today that recently I've written very little on the blog about the practicalities of organically growing cut flowers, we've been swept along with the glamour of photographers, websites and postcards.

When it comes to the more muddy side of the job my main preoccupation is compost! There are two types of compost in my head (probably quite literally) The first is a growing medium for seeds and young plants and the second is that what you add to the surface of the soil as a mulch to seal in moisture and smother weeds.

Cleverer people than I can make compost which is good enough to raise plants in. My composting results are usually only just good enough to be used as a soil conditioner and this is something I need to work on over the next few years.

For seed sowing and potting then I need to buy in compost. Peat has previously been a bit of a guilty secret that I had carried around with me. The extraction of peat both from the Somerset levels on our doorstep and from the Baltic States and Russia is directly destroying what remains of the lowland raised peat bogs which are a unique habitat supporting thousands of species which are not found anywhere else.

I was quite suprised when we joined the Soil Association to find that they do allow the use of peat in propagating media although they recommend that alternatives are used where possible. I was determined to be rid my guilt and find an alternative. At first it all seemed very daunting and looked as if it was going to involve buying in ingredients like composted bark chippings, perlite, grit and some kind of approved base fertiliser. I was prepared to give it a go but was worried about making expensive mistakes with the ingredients and ending up with no plants at all.

Then I found Fertile Fibre.....it's fantastic! It's based on Coir which is a waste product from the coconut industry and actually performs better than any peat based compost I've ever used. It doesn't dry out particularly quickly which is the usual concern with coir and all 5000 of my plants this spring look very happy in it. They do a seed compost which is finely shredded and a potting compost which contains a bit more composted bark.

I suppose the downside (and there usually is one) is that the coir is shipped in from Sri Lanka but I can't help think that this has got to be better than shipping in unsustainable peat from Russia.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that, so if you still have a peat habit then now you know how to kick it.
Jo x

Happy me

Letters stuck on the side of a vehicle shouldn't make me feel this good but they do...I can't stop grinning.

Big hugs to Nathan (the best graphic designer in the universe) for painstakingly peeling off the backing paper instead of watching the football last night and for sorting out the wiggly "m" with a pin and lots of patience.

I almost felt a bit shy driving around today but also ridiculously proud.

More pictures please.......

Yippee, New Shed. We couldn't afford it but did it anyway. A necessity for conditioning the flowers, and somewhere to put the radio.

Jon said I couldn't have a chair but I've sneaked one in whilst he's been away.

Shed's are great and I love it already.

And Finally...........Flowers in Shed. I've just cut these for Leslie's Flower Shop in Frome for an organic wedding on Saturday. I had a lovely time cutting them and Karen is coming to pick them up early in the morning. It's beginning to feel as if the planning stage of this business is over and things are finally beginning to happen.

Busy weekend!

Lunchtime

This is Little Wood, just over the gate and into the next field, is where we go to have lunch, get out of the heat of the tunnels and run the dogs where they don't worry so much game. It's a small piece of ancient/semi-natural woodland with what looks like some Victorian Scots Pine planting, probably some oaks were extracted before WWII, but very little disturbance since then. It's absolutely pristine.

What a brilliant week its been. Not only has the weather been completely gorgeous but we've sold loads of flowers, in fact we've sold every flower that our hard working Sweet Pea plants have produced this week, about 250 in all. Most have been sold through Miller-Ashman florists in Midsomer Norton as bunches of 12 and have been snapped up within hours of being delivered. I can't quite put into words what a relief and satisfying feeling it is after all these months of hard work to have produced something that people want to buy. I'm looking forward to taking another 100 to Rachel's shop in Bath on Thursday because I know she's going to love them, they smell so gorgeous.

We've also had an order from Lesley's Flower Shop in Frome for 150 next week. These are destined for an organic bridal bouquet which is a lovely thought. I'll enjoy cutting those next Friday morning.

We've managed to help out Henrietta for her wedding as well. She tracked us down through Google in her search for a back up plan in case her first plan of growing her own wedding flowers didn't succeed. As it turned out, chickens escaping into her flower garden have put paid to her best intentions and fortunately for her we should be well and truly blooming by her wedding day in July.

Ripples

That was it - I remember now! It was a conversation, long ago with the one and only eco-visionary Liam Egerton (now measuring cow-flatulence for the Australian government in Melbourne) To put him in context, Liam appeared so far ahead of everyone else, he got bored waiting and moved on. When everyone eventually caught up, all they found was a pair of trainers, a Rush CD and some fluff. His take on 'transitional ethics' seemed brilliant to my troglodyte Welsh brain; i.e. how does one gets from A to B (where A = Bad, B = Good)? Easy, by substituting letters for integers and increasing the range i.e. from 1 to 10 (where 1 = Bad, 10 = Good) How does that relate to flowers, clay, Docks and beauty? I'm not sure, but I need to be at work . . . . . . .

visionary (adj.)

"able to see visions," 1651, from vision (q.v.). Meaning "impractical" is attested from 1727. The noun is attested from 1702, from the adj., originally "one who indulges in impractical fantasies."

Sweating like a . . . . (add your simile here, best answers receive a free bunch of sweet peas) . . it's been so warm?! Saturday, and Finn and I were up with Jo at Hackmead today, me; digging out the paths and raising the last of the usable beds, Finn potting up in the sweltering polytunnel heat, Jo planting out. It's all becoming real, the two dimensional idea ('let's do this!) into three dimensional actuality ('we WILL do this!') turning into 4-dimensional madness ('how the HELL are we going to do all that?!') Two days ago we cut all the sweet peas that were ready or nearing ready to go; 48 hours later; 142 new long stems, vase perfect and looking like they'd been there all the time and we just hadn't noticed them (like trying to watch the moon actually move across a night sky).

But the beds are getting there, we've lost a few that we've had to cover with mypex to the south, and some we've made mistakes with their construction, but most should all be ready to plant this week. And now it's the selling, the marketing, the pricing, the haggling, the valuing, the guessing, the hoping, the trusting and the luck (or is it skill?) of turning this all into revenue. I think that's as exciting as growing them all in the first place though!

....and for the next task

....you will need a trowel and a strong back. Over the next couple of weeks we'll be planting approximately 5,000 plants by hand, preparing the base for a new packing shed, picking and pinching out the Sweet Peas and trying to remember to breathe in between jobs.

The weather is absolutely perfect this week, it's been sunny enough to dry out our soggy old soil and remind me why I like working outside. The plants are behaving as if someone has just turned on the switch and doubling in size each week so once they are established them in their final growing space I can leave them to get on with it.

Oh yes, I've just remembered ...I'll have to start cutting then, won't I?

Best find my trowel.....

These are the sweet peas on Monday, just before cutting, which went to David (Ion Acoustics in the Wool Hall) for his wife Moira (Congratulations!) for their wedding anniversary and birthday. They had to compete with two shop-bought bouquets and a long hunt for a vase, we hope they didn't get bullied at night and that they hold their own this week. He probably looked a great sight, cycling through Bristol with them under his arm, like an extra from a Hugh Grant movie?! They've only been in the ground for 3 weeks (the sweet peas, not David and Moira, what they get up to in the the solitude of their own house is no business of ours) and Jo has to stand on a stool to pinch out some of them; there's fear in her eyes in the evenings these last few days. The sunshine has catapulted the plants into a higher state of growiness, potting on and planting out has jumped to the top of the list, in fact it's not a list any more, but a very long stream-of-consciousness sentence, with no punctuation. She's already sun-burned like a cowgirl with fingers twitchy for her mother-of-pearl-inlaid Trowel. It's not the Railroad that's coming, but the Rotavator, one cylinder, 4-strokes and spiked wheels of destruction . . . .The Tilth and and the Fury.

Bank Holiday Weekend! And it's been raining . . . .