Growing organic vegetables in Sussex
Here’s a You-tube video to show you what we’ve got growing in the glasshouse at the moment.
We’re regularly doing Farmers Markets now – you can see us at
Uckfield – 1st Saturday of the Month
Hassocks 4th Saturday of the Month
Middle Farm 4th Sunday of the Month
Chelwood Gate – every 2 months – next market in September
See you there
We had our annual works outing to Kew last week. We’ve actually been supplying them with some Pineapple plants from the nursery here and we were able to go back stage and look at the propagating nurseries which was great. Inspired by their success with biological controls, we’re going to introduce garlic spraying to reduce aphid numbers – watch this space for progress reports.
We’ve finally expanded into the last unused greenhouse here and have now planted out rows and rows of squash plants for the autumn. These are a great crop for us to grow as the plants are robust, grow well, crop prolifically and are easy to harvest. They store well too. I certainly didn’t expect to be colonising the 4th house so soon – we’ve not been here for 3 years yet.
In the process of clearing the house out we’ve found several beautiful pale yellow grass snakes who’ve made the nursery their home. The wildlife is astonishing. There’s a herd of about 20-30 deer who seem to live at the bottom of the next field and a fox who has now become a regular day time visitor – competing with Merlin our handsome feral cat for the baby rabbits I expect.
Next farmers markets for us are Townings Farm on the 21st and Hassocks on the 27th. Then back at Uckfield for the 4th of July
This week its all been grey again – but on Saturday her Majesty and I will be at the Farmers Market at Chelwood Gate – just at the top of the high weald about 5 miles south of Forest Row.
This is a great little market run in the village hall and a marquee in the grounds. High Weald Dairy, an excellent organic chocolate stall and various farm shops are all represented.
If the weather brightens up we might even have some yellow courgettes for you as well as some strawberries and broadbeans.
in the meantime – here are some wonderful basil plants to cheer you up.
2 years on we have 3 of the 4 houses back into production so we’re now starting to rehabilitate the 4th house.
This had been producing alstromeria – while some of this was rescuable, most of it had been so invaded by creeping thistle and ferns (not to mention the odd tree) that we’ve had to cut them down – dig them out and cover in cardboard and mipex to suppress the weeds. Plan is to plant it out with squash which have all been merrily growing on the benches for the last few weeks.
We’ve had to add Phil to our stalwart Lee and James to keep up with the work of planting out some of the herbs and vegetables we’ve got coming on – some of which you can see here.
This week we have Strawberries and the first Broad Beans available so we’re really looking forward to a good summer.
There’ve been some changes in the box schemes we support. We Love Local have been taken over by Crumbs of Sussex with whom we already have a good working relationship. We’ve also started to build up our supplies to Ashurst Organics of Plumpton while continuing to support our existing customers Greenfield Boxes, Bills of Lewes, Middle Farm and Plaw Hatch Farm.
If you want to meet us, Isobel and I will be at the Farmers Market in Chelwood Gate on Saturday 16th of May and will be telling the story of the nursery to the Surrey Chartered Institute of Marketing meeting in June – details here.
The longer days are bringing on the plants a treat and we are ramping up production to several hundred salad bags a week. Radishes, pak choi, chard, fennel and leeks are all looking good and selling well this week.
At last the Alstromeria are back on song and selling well at the Farmers Markets we attend – Uckfield on the 1st Saturday of the month and Hassocks on the 4th
This month we’re at Chelwood Gate on the 16th – held at the Village Hall.
So if you fancy a fun morning amongst the produce we’ll see you there
As the sun crawls over the equinox the plants are really getting back to work.
We are shipping leaves of every description. Salad bags, stir-fry bags, rocket bags, sorrel bags – not to mention lots of lovely broccoli.
We have been steadily working towards finding a way to supply small outlets where its hard for our team to deliver economically. Like most solutions, this one was a flash of the blindingly obvious.
Our sister business, plants4presents.co.uk sends plants by post and by courier all over the UK. We already have a large supply of stout cardboard boxes. So why not put the two together, fill a 300 x 300 x 900 box with bags of leaves and ship them out in the usual way for overnight delivery. If you are within Sussex we have managed to get a sweet deal from the courier. If you are running a restaurant or local shop and want a good quality supply of fresh organic vegetables look no further.
More news in a couple of weeks.
As the season turns the plants start growing. We have lots of lovely salad leaves and the sunshine is bringing everything on.
The Farmer’s Markets are getting going again too. We were at Hassocks last week, Uckfield this week and Chelwood Gate next week. So if you’re out and about in Sussex on Saturday mornings come and see us.
March is a really busy time for sowing and our veg team are sowing and transplanting like mad. This year we’re going to be growing new varieties of chillis, white aubergines and we plan to plant up the newly cleared “Dorset” house with Squash.
Last week we were speaking at a food evening run by one of our box scheme customers at the Eagle pub in the North Laines in Brighton. We Love Local will be running these events monthly in and around Brighton. The next one will be about preparing unusual vegetables run on Tuesday, 7th April. Watch this space.
We’ve come a long way since that first post. We got our soil association certificate as fully organic in September 2008 and just this week we passed our inspection.
Everything that’s been planted since September 13th is now officially organic. So onward and upwards.
We’ve been steadily reclaiming the houses and are now growing in most of house number 3 and are well into clearing out house 4 – that’s the long one on the right of the picture. More news soon!
We used to be (and still are) an internet consultancy but decided to start doing it for ourselves so we set up www.plants4presents.co.uk in 2004.
By the summer of 2006 the expansion of the company meant that we needed 5000 square feet to store and pack the plants.
It turned out that the most effective way forward was to acquire a former chrysanthemum nursery that had the the packing station and potting benches we needed. So we duly ended up with 2 acres of abandoned glasshouse – that was back last Autumn.
So we thought that organic veg in cold houses was the way forward and duly registered with the soil association. We’ve been running a pilot in one house with about 1/4 of and acre since January and now we’re in the process of ramping up production and commissioning the next house.
We’re supplying about 8 local outlets now.
More details at our squidoo lens www.squidoo.com/theglasshouses
I’ve re-discovered the joys of face to face cold calling and selling at farmer’s markets
More to follow
Alan
