The Humble Cabbage

Hello everyone, 

Bob and I hope you are safe and have had little or no damage after the storms this week.

Very often we receive great emails from our many customers. This week we have had a fab email from our lovely customer, Vivien. She expressed her thanks for our Fresh Local and Organic produce. We are delighted and feel a little smug with the huge praise Vivien bestowed upon us. More importantly, she reminded us that it was National Cabbage Day last Thursday. Thank you Vivien.

Cabbages are part of the brassica family and can be grown and eaten throughout the year. We grow an assortment of cabbages…red, green, Chinese, pyramid shaped, round, crinkly leafed, smooth leafed, firm or loose headed and spring greens. This coming year we will grow over 3,000 cabbages! Some may groan that it is a ‘cabbage in the box again!’ However, they are extremely versatile when it comes to preparing and eating the humble cabbage.

They can be boiled, but they can also be pickled, fermented (on trend), steamed, sautéed, braised, roasted or just raw. You can make slaws, curries, pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, stuffed leaves, as well as a staple of your Sunday dinner.

Raw cabbage is full of vitamin C and K, both helping to maintain a healthy body. we hope you enjoy your cabbage when you receive one next.

The lovely Lucy has been sowing loads and loads of seeds these past two weeks. The greenhouses are both "chockablock". Not surprisingly, some of the trays are full of summer cabbage seeds.

All the trays of seeds will eventually be transplanted out into the outside growing area of the Pond Field or into one of our ten polytunnels within the Green Field. Both of these fields are being readied for the transplants. As we use the crops we have, to supply you all and our two restaurants, the ground is cleared , occasionally, a sprinkling of fresh compost is scattered on the surface and maybe some rock dust (a mix of minerals required for good growing) is added. Then, when the plugs of new vegetables are ready for planting out, it is all go, go, go, to get them all transplanted. This will be from March onwards.

As the weather has been pretty bad for working outside, the polytunnels have all had an early spring clean. Each tunnel has had the crops tidied, the watering systems carefully placed, the sprinklers from the sprinkling system replaced (they tend to fly off when the weather becomes frozen), wood chip paths straightened and any weeds, about to spring into growth, pulled.

The tunnel coverings had slight wind damage from branches bouncing, trampoline style, off the covering. A few holes were created but have now been made good with fresh sticky tunnel tape.

The tunnels cover an area of a quarter of an acre and they are soooo ready for the new season planting. This was completed, in just over three days, by Graham, Bob and myself. Our ‘no-dig’ approach really does seem to work. We have great crops, few weeds and easy to manage land. The ‘no-dig’ system provides a method whereby we are caring for the soil which we are using to grow our organic crops. It has taken a short time for HexOrg to be at such a stage within the polytunnels. The outside growing area is on the way to be just as easy to manage. We will just have to sort out those pesky pigeons who really like our cabbages! 

Till next time,

Take care,

 Ann👩‍🌾