Stuck in the land of plenty

There haven’t been many opportunities to post to the blog recently.  Events in Iceland meant my visit to southern Spain was longer than planned.

Bliss – lots of fresh local vegetables on the stalls in Cadiz market and not much sign of a hungry gap!

How we intend to bridge the ‘hungry gap’

We’re now entering the traditional “hungry gap”, which means that the normally wide variety of local, home-grown veg is becoming increasingly hard to come by in the UK.

It’s the time of year when the root crops and brassicas of winter and early spring either run out or start to bolt in the increasingly warm weather. 

At the same time, we’re waiting for the late spring and summer crops to grow.

So what can we do to fill the weekly vegetable boxes short-term?

Rather than go beyond Cornwall or even outside the UK, we’ll probably start to fill the boxes with more ”high-value” vegetables such as Cornish mushrooms from Tregonning Farm, Stithians. 

When the asparagus season begins, you may find that it’s one of only a few vegetables in the boxes.  But well worth it!  And extremely local – from Cornish Asparagus at Lower Croan, Sladesbridge.

We’ll also have some vegetables cultivated in polytunnels by our own expert growers - salad leaves, radishes, spring onions, spinach and coriander.

Growing fast

The growing team have been busy preparing seed beds and sowing all kinds of veg - Swiss chard, rainbow chard, perpetual spinach, beetroot and carrot seeds. 

They’ve planted out the first of the lettuces brought on in the polytunnel, and pricked out celery and celeriac seedlings.

Over the last two Sundays our volunteers have also been erecting a much-needed fence to keep out the rabbits, which seem to be multiplying by the minute.

Thanks to expert growers Jeremy and Mark N and to volunteers Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Fiona, Fred, Jerry, Kitty, Mark M, Mike S and Theresa.  And to our younger helpers Finn and Keira.

Popeye’s favourite in this week’s veg boxes …

But a bit of a warning too: box contents are smaller this week as available produce begins to run low. We’re entering the “hungry gap” – we may be enjoying the warmer, longer days but unfortunately they mean that the winter brassicas are beginning to bolt and the new sowings such as broad beans are not yet ready to harvest. Still, this week we should be getting (although we’re not 100 per cent sure until tomorrow):

Small boxes:
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* spinach (Jeremy Brown)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)
* salad leaves (Jeremy)

Medium boxes will have more of some of the above plus:
mushrooms (Tregonning Farm, Stithians)
sprouting broccoli (Cornish wholesaler)

* = grown to organic principles