Grow-our-own veg team have no chance to hibernate

You might think that Camel CSA’s growing team have their feet up indoors at this time of year, browsing through seed catalogues, surrounded by chilli garlands and sustained by large vats of vegetable soup.

No such chance! It’s time to do all sorts of jobs on our community vegetable-growing plot.

Apart from harvesting the over-wintered stocks for the weekly veg boxes, we’re starting to get the site ready for next season’s crops.

On Sunday morning expert grower Jane helped Sophie and Freddie, two of our junior members, to sow the first crop of early carrots in our second polytunnel.

While they basked in the warmth, the rest of us braved the cold Cornish wind and carried on preparing and planting our new soft fruit area. 

As the ground there is quite poor and stony, we’re using the lasagne gardening method. This was a great success in our tomato, pepper, aubergine and chilli polytunnel last summer where it helped retain moisture and improve the soil.

The rhubarb crowns are already safe in the ground. The rest of the fruit bushes – culinary and dessert gooseberries, red, white and blackcurrants, summer and autumn raspberries – have been heeled in. They’ll be planted next weekend.

We’ve gone through an enormous amount of cardboard  - big thankyou to Laura and Joe at St Mabyn PO and Stores. But we’re fast running out again. If you have any old boxes, please leave them in the potting shed, which is between the tractor shelter and the polytunnels.

Many thanks to expert growers Jane and Mark N and the rest of Sunday’s volunteer growing team – Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Freddie (6), Gillian, Mark N, Mike and Sophie (9).

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Camel CSA growers get a taste for lasagne gardening

The ground inside our new polytunnel is rock hard as a result of the prolonged dry spell in Cornwall. So it’s proved too difficult to dig deeply by hand to prepare for planting the tomatoes and peppers.

That’s why we’re experimenting with a no-dig method known in the United States as lasagne gardening.

This permaculture approach involves placing cardboard on the ground to suppress the weeds, watering it thoroughly and then covering it with newspaper and thick layers of compost or other organic material.

We’re planting the tomatoes and peppers directly into the compost and a hole is being pierced through the cardboard so the plants’ roots get access to the earth underneath.

All being well, there will be lovely friable soil once the cardboard has rotted down at the end of the season.

So watch this space!

• Special thanks to Joe and Laura Brown at St Mabyn PO & Stores for all their recycled cardboard

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