SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER
Croeso and Diolch to all our customers, for those not aware these newsletters are written as an update to keep you all in the loop with what’s been going on here at Hooma Hu; keeping you informed with any upcoming crops, events or changes. We hope you enjoy reading it!
Its been a strange end to summer with the weather seeming to take an autumnal turn earlier than usual. Infact it has been a strange growing season in general with temperatures seeming well below average the whole way through. This has affected the crops, colder temperatures mean slower growth and more chance of rot and disease in plants. The squash have been very slow to grow, there are still squash that need to develop properly and we are keeping our fingers crossed they mature by October. The Tomatoes have been very slow, one variety only just ripening at the end of August and a much earlier onset of blight. Courgettes have suffered with much more rot than usual. Despite this we have had a fair old amount of produce coming out of our plots the past few months and the veg garden has still produced some lovely stuff. Some of the highlights for me have been the lovely spaceship shaped pattipan squash, the very interesting “atomic grape” tomatoes and the beautiful pointed cabbages that worked very well.
August saw the finishing touches being put on our new polytunnel, the one that so many of you helped out with. It is now complete and is looking great!! The structure it self is finished so now work will begin on the soil. We plan to start with a no dig, raised bed system, covering the ground in cardboard and then applying a mulch of compost on top of the cardboard. The idea of this is that the cardboard on the soil will block out light to stop any weeds growing up and the compost will weigh down the cardboard to stop it blowing away. Crops will then be planted in to the compost. As the weeks go past the cardboard will disintegrate allowing the roots of the crops we have planted to penetrate the soil below. Then as the months go past the compost we have applied will be very slowly mixed with soil underneath by earthworms and other biological soil activity. The end result is a growing system that should be pretty weed free from the start, plus the because the soil has not been turned over by human digging all the complex web of life that exists in it will go on un disturbed, the perfect environment for plants to grow in! The more we preserve the biology in the soil the healthier our plants will be.
Some crops seemed to come along nicely this year and despite the cold weather we did have a good amount of rain to keep the soil moist at least. Then came mid July. In mid July we had the arrival of an univited army of tiny slimey one footed monsters determined to eat all our vegetable plants: SLUGS! And eat them they did! When in May I could plant a bed of Cabbages out in the field and they would grow on fine, come July I would do the same thing and within 5 days EVERY SINGLE plant had gone, eaten by slugs.. Now here at Hooma Hu we do not use chemicals, so pesticides are not an option at all for us. Many people recommended beer traps however with the numbers of slugs we are having and the scale we would need more like beer ponds to make a difference. Also worth noting about beer traps is that in the past I have found that they also can kill beetles, beetles eat slug eggs, so by killing the beetles we may well be increasing slug population in the future. We decided instead to go evening missions with a head torch to the veg plot to see how many slugs we could pick off ourselves. In one hour we must have picked up about 600 slugs.. off one vegetable bed! This seemed to do the trick, although labour intensive for the next week the little plants were untouched. However, after a week or so more slugs just kept coming… That’s when I looked in to Nematodes.. Nematodes are microscopic creatures that live in the soil, they can be seen with a microscope only, we have tried and could see them! They look like tiny worms. The good news is some nematodes are a parasite to slugs and will actually kill them. Nematodes are very much approved for Organic growing as they do affect the plants or any other animal at all and live naturally in the soil. We got hold of and released some slug nematodes in to our soil and then tried again with the planting one week later. Low and behold the plants seem untouched! They have now been growing in the soil for 10 days and no damage yet so it is looking good for these cabbages and amazingly an army of tiny worms are now fighting the slugs for us, incredible! The Cabbages have a long way to go, they will grow up until November, then sit through the winter until they finish their growing in spring to hopefully provide us with cabbages in April and May, fingers crossed for them.
As we turn to October we see all the winter vegetable planting coming to an end. The polytunnel will be filled with winter salads, winter lettuce, boc choi, cabbages and spring onions that can be picked through out the winter and grown in to spring. We should start to harvest these, bar the cabbage, in November so you can look forward to them then. The field plots will begin to be “put to bed” for the winter. This involves applying another layer of compost to the soil, this protects the soil from the harsh winter rains washing any nutrients away and also keeps the weeds down. Come end of October we should be picking Leeks, Parsnips and Squash from our then very muddy field. We hope you are looking forward to these crops, we are!
Thanks so much for reading and keeping up to date with some of the goings on here at Hooma Hu, as always if you have any questions feel free to get in touch with us. We hoped you enjoyed our newsletter.
Cariad Mawr
Rita, Luna and Will
Comments