What’s in the boxes
August 7, 2009
You’ve guessed it! We can expect more chard in the boxes this week plus a selection from potatoes, onions, spinach, white cabbage, courgettes, cucumber, salad leaves, parsley and spring onions.
The late start to Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s first planting season, the challenging growing conditions and the rising total of veg boxes are all taking their toll on the crops cultivated by our volunteers. We are gradually buying in more vegetables from our own expert growing team.
Mark Norman, one of our expert growers, reflects the observations of his vegetable growing colleagues:
“All vegetable growers have experienced three bad years in a row. The weather has been atrocious across Britain. All over the country, growers are complaining. For instance, the beans are not pollinating properly. The supermarkets are coping as they are importing from abroad.”
In spite of this, Camel CSA’s volunteers continue to turn out in all weathers. Thanks to last week’s picking team of Cath, Charlotte, Fiona, Mike H and Robert. Trish did the maths and masterminded the packing of the vegetable boxes.
The growing team took advantage of a dry morning on Sunday to plant out the remaining 10 rows of brassicas and cover them with fleece. We put in more than 750 plants, including Savoy cabbage (Vertus variety), cauliflower (Thalassa), Brussels sprouts (Igor and Darkmar) and red cabbage (Red Rum).
Thank you to expert growers Jane and Jeremy and to Carolyn, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Kayleigh, Kitty, Mike H, Mike S. and six-year-old Haydn.
Now the planting’s over, it’s time to start lifting and storing our bumper crop of onions. And we need to make a concerted attack on the even larger crop of annual and perennial weeds…
