May 2025
A few days ago the hawthorn at the end of the garden burst into bloom and filled our house with its thick nectar scent. Every time I walk past it the blossoms are fizzing with insects. And then today the spectral hanging bodies of St Marks flies arrived, hovering at eye height, tangling in my hair.
This is how it is now, although it still feels like we’re in panic prep mode for the season ahead, everything is vibrating with life. The overwintered garlic is bursting into scapes and before they open we cut the long stems and closed buds and sauté them, tangy green and garlicky delicious. The broad beans are humming with bees and pods are filling. Tomatoes are throwing out their first starry flowers, we have most of them in the ground now, only a couple hundred more to plant! And yesterday the aubergines arrived from Delflands, a wholesale organic plant nursery, that we are trailing grafted plants from in hopes of a heavier crop, a more established and happy plant, and more space in the propagation tunnel at this time of year.
This season we are growing a few of our crops for The Welsh Veg in Schools scheme, an initiative that is helping growers sell their organic produce directly into Welsh schools. It aims to help growers scale up and produce more, all the while children get to eat fresher, more nutritious vegetables, and it helps cut down food miles. It’s been a really successful pilot, and now in its third year has much bigger aims. We’re growing cucumbers and tomatoes and hoping that the extra contract growing will help with some of the investment we’ve laid out for the tunnels this year. That being said the tunnels look pretty glorious- new doors and windows on all 10 being used for this season. We’ve got a few of them covered, only the 3-span left to go! What a busy spring.
In every corner of the newly covered tunnels mum (and quite often one of my children when she’s on grandparent duty!) is digging in flower beds. We don’t even pretend it’s for the pollinators anymore, it’s just for the joy of being surrounded by vibrant, colourful life. And if they buzz with insects too then all the better!
Great right now:
Veg- fresh new season kale will be back next week! Lettuces, spinach, chard, salads, asparagus, spring greens/rapa shoots all in season and really excellent. The spring greens have fluctuated in availability but do check if they’re on the website from week to week because they’re so sweet and delicious- the kale is too as its tunnel grown. Super soft leaves and much more like a salad green at this time of year. We’ll be picking spring onions next week, and keep your eyes peeled for the first succession of bunched beet in a couple of weeks’ time. Local broad beans too with any luck! At this time of year everything changes very quickly so do check the website for updates.
Fruit- Mole End apples continue to be excellent in flavour and quality but we also have the Inored Story apples from Europe that are really crisp and delicious too. Watermelons are small but well flavoured and will come down in price (or expand in size-one of the two!) rapidly. Hopefully joined by honeydews and more Charentais soon. Stone fruit arrived last week with nectarines, we’ll be looking at peaches and apricots as soon as we can sweet talk our importer to send them! And one day very soon we’ll get the call about cherries… but I’m getting ahead of myself!
Mushrooms- The local oyster mushrooms from Hyphae are flying out at the moment and are really excellent on the barbecue at this time of year, whilst we’ve had a few issues with supply of the French shiitakes they are back in stock as of Monday.