One of Camel CSA’s more tedious but necessary winter tasks is washing down the polytunnels.

We’ve got overwintering salad crops in all three tunnels, so keeping them clean and hygienic is an important job.

Early sowings of carrots, broad beans, radishes, spring onions and peas are also growing indoors.

       Camel CSA’s professional growers are busy getting ready for our fifth spring growing season.

Camel CSA’s growing team are busy cultivating our over-wintering crops. We’ve got “cut and come again” salad leaves in the polytunnels – mixed lettuce, curly endive, rocket, mibuna and mizuna. Also beetroot, kohlrabi, chard, spinach, parsley and spring onions. Outdoors we’re starting to plant garlic and onion sets for harvesting next summer.

The overwintered oriental leaves that have kept our vegetable boxes going over the past few months are starting to go to seed.

Instead, we have plenty of mixed lettuce, baby chard, radishes, bright red and yellow leaf beet, spring onions and salad rocket in the polytunnel to look forward to.

Our three expert growers have also been busy preparing growing beds and planting outside over the past week. As the last of the previous season’s onion harvest went into the veg boxes, the last of this year’s onion sets went into the ground.

Already planted are shallots, parsnips, beetroot, broad beans, turnips, cabbage, spring onions, radishes, perpetual spinach, garlic and calabrese. Next job on the list is to sow a bed of peas.

Camel CSA’s hard-working secretary Mike Sadler loves fennel, so we’re sowing a whole 120-module tray of it especially for him. The seedlings will be planted outdoors later on our plot.

Other jobs for the growing team this Sunday morning include sowing more cabbage, chard and perpetual spinach (leaf beet) into modules. We’ll also be planting rocket in the polytunnel to add variety to our salad bags.

There’s parsnip seeds to sow straight into the ground as well as more onion beds to prepare and onion sets to plant.

See you there!

We’ve been enjoying some ideal growing weather in Cornwall. We had south-west gales and torrential rain on Easter Monday (which sent the tourists scurrying home early) followed by several days of spring showers and warm sunshine.

So we’ve been hard at work planting hundreds more onion sets and sowing radishes.

We’ve also planted out bunched spring onions and shallots, spring cabbage and some colourful ruby red and canary yellow leaf beet (perpetual spinach).

We’ve been busy sowing, growing and hoeing on our community veg patch over the past week.

We’ve weeded the polytunnels, planted out mixed lettuce to replace the pak choi, and sown an indoor crop of French beans.

More mange tout and carrot seeds have been put in to mitigate the mouse damage. Fortunately the field mice left the indoor broad beans alone for some reason, but the recent warm, dry spell in Cornwall has delayed germination of the outdoor crop.

The fine, sunny weather has enabled us to get more growing beds ready with our Big Lottery-funded  tractor and to plant hundreds more onion sets.

It’ll soon be time to plant out the spring onions, cabbages, sweet peas, shallots and leaf beet sown earlier in modules. We’ve also sowed more cabbage, calabrese, spring onions, rocket and kohl rabi.

Thanks to expert growers Bridget, Jane, Mark N and to Bob, Cath, Charlotte, Mark M, Mike and Tom.

Wee, sleekit, cow’ring, tim’rous beasties? Or nasty little pests that dig up our seeds and pee all over our polytunnels?

Sharing a vegetable-growing site with Cornish wildlife can have its drawbacks. We’ve been overrun by a plague of long-tailed field mice.

They’ve taken up residence in our potting shed amid the piles of cardboard that we’re using for our lasagne gardening. They’ve run riot all over the polytunnels and eaten everything from beetroot to onion seeds.

So it’s time to hang the seed trays from the rafters of the polytunnels. And we’ve decided to resort to more drastic action.

Camel CSA 1: Meeces 0

But as the war against pesky predators continues, so much for the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men. Now we’ve discovered an entire newly-sown bed of broad beans have gone missing…

The unseasonably warm weather in north Cornwall at the moment is putting us under a lot of pressure.

Our many and varied jobs this weekend include: –
• Planting out the broad beans from the cold frame
• Sowing clusters of beetroot Boltardy outside
• Planting more onion sets
• Sowing a bed of French beans in the polytunnel
• Sowing tomatoes in modules
• Sowing half a tray of summer cabbages

We need to set up the cold frames, cut the grass and thoroughly water the early crops in the polytunnels. We also have to complete a couple of other important jobs we didn’t have time to get done last weekend.

Camel CSA’s growing team has another list of jobs to get through this Sunday, as the weather warms up.

Everyone is welcome to join in between 10am and 12 noon on Sunday.

Some of the jobs have been done by expert grower Bridget Gould but we still need to: –

• Plant the last of the gooseberries and raspberries in the soft fruit area
• Sow radishes in the root bed
• Plant turnips from modules into the root bed and cover in fleece
• Plant one and a half beds of onion sets (Cupido)
• Set up the cold frames

• Water the polytunnels (overwintered salad leaves and early crops of radishes, spring onions, carrots, broad beans, mange tout peas)
• Cut the grass on the paths and around the sheds (as we didn’t have time to last week)

Remember to wear stout footwear, bring a waterproof and don’t forget a snack! We will provide protective gloves.

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