June/July News

We've had a very dry, hot and breezy June, its now just over 4 weeks since we had a lot of rain, when we had localised flooding here in East Kent, that seems an age ago now, but in hindsight we were lucky to get that rain.

Yay for new potatoes, courgettes, beetroot, basil, cucumbers (and tomatoes soon) to fill up our stall at Stoke Newington, Wye and Whitstable Farmer's Markets, as well as onions, kale, spinack, chard, parsley, lettuce and salad leaves.
The current dry spell will start to cause problems with our veg prduction soon as our soil moisture levels are dropping rapidly and the strong easterly breeze we've had for the last 10 days has been welcome to us humans, keeping the temperatures bearable and the humidity low,   however, the downside is the breeze is very dessicating and is stripping moisture from our esablished crops. Need to get Martin to practice his rain dance!

Our field irrigation options are very low-tech as we don’t have the equipment or infrastructure for anything better. We had to water-in some squash plants at the end of June, 5 hours with a long hosepipe and we’ve set up some T-tape (trickle tape) to give enough moisture to germinate our recent sowing of carrots. Watering our baby plants in trays takes around an hour once or twice a day, and greenhouse crops are mostly irrigated with t-tape (very efficient as only the area next to a plant is watered).

We've lots more transplanting and weeding to do in July (as well as harvesting and packing 5 days a week) so a busy month ahead before the August lull.