Cold dry Spring brings problems

Isn't it wonderful weather people who aren't growing food often say to us. Well yes, it has been cold, dry and sunny for a very long time. But it's doing no good to our orchard blossoms, our newly-planted fruit bushes, our veg sowings and - most of all - our tomatoes. We had to plant out some nearly a week ago because they were so tall and beginning to flower. Then the night time temperatures really took a nosedive. Last night, the forecast was for -3 degrees!

Tomatoes can't stand less than about +5 degrees. Of course, the polytunnel offers some protection but we have had to devise a special tent (pictured above) made out of lengths of fleece suspended from the crop wires and pegged together with clothespegs to try and protect the poor plants. Look inside the tent (second photo; click it to make it bigger). Along the centre of the rows, you might notice a line of candles - we were getting desperate! - and a max-min thermometer. The idea was that  lighting candles overnight inside the tent would raise the temperature a degree or so. In fact, counterintuitively, it didn't; the temperature dropped to just under 5 degrees. Conclusion: convection currents set up by the candles sucked in cool air from outside the tent.

 Apart from the cold (which meant covering all the emerging potato crop with fleece), we have really been troubled by the virtual drought we've had since the start of April. There's been about 15mm rain in 6 weeks, mostly as scattered light (near useless) showers. The water tanks for the polytunnel irrigation, normally full at this time of year, are almost empty and we are having to hand water all the outside bushes, sowings and transplants. Goodness knows what our resulting crops will be like for our group members but we are doing our best. Rain is forecast for tonight...

Polytunnel raised: CSA group's first success

Today, our wonderful new CSA group completed its first major action. We successfully got the polythene cover over the frame and secured it into the ground and at each end. Mike and Jill offer big thanks to Rosemary and Matthew (who worked yesterday on digging trenches), Deio (who works 'on demand' - and there have been a lot of demands lately), Mayumi (and her son), Christine (and her daughter), Joan, Mark and Jeff (Shrimala Trust), Helen and John (from Llangybi), Bry and Val (from Mur Crusto farm, the other half of the co-op). It was almost, yes, fun! The weather was fair and there seemed to be a lot of laughter and joking going on. Some good entertainment was Mike and Jill bickering about how best to achieve this or that task. But we all pulled together like a team. Our group was impressively international: Welsh, English, American, German and Japanese, and at least 3 languages could be heard from time to time.

I (Bry) am particularly delighted at the way things are working out with this group help. I've nurtured the idea since the start of Llangybi Organics and it really works! So once again, I have the pleasure of reminding group members that you are very welcome to come and help yourselves to veg - particularly at present where there is a massive surplus of green leafy things in Mur Crusto's polytunnel. (For some reason, Jill hasn't got anything growing in her new tunnel except a few scraggy nettles!)

I've put a photoalbum online here which depicts all the final stages of the Great Event.

Frozen solid!

The freezing weather has caused us some considerable difficulties. The ground is frozen solid and so are the vegetables. Even so, by judicious use of a crowbar and a little (grand)child labour, we have heroically managed to produce a reasonable set of boxes and bags this week.

Even the veg in the polytunnel has been frozen with my thermometer regularly recording -3 or -4 degrees overnight. If the freeze continues, we may have problems because, of course, nothing is growing and the daily freezing and thawing does the veg no good at all.

We'll do our best but we just thought we should let you know what's happening in this unprecedented freeze-up.

Mur Crusto crops and Ty'n Lon tatws

I thought you'd like to see a couple of pictures, taken just a few minutes ago. We started harvesting leeks for the bags last week. They're doing very well and most are quite a decent size (picture, L). On the R are some of the polytunnel crops: lettuces, chard (on L) and fennel, the feathery stuff in the centre.

Our potato weekend went well, despite the lifter falling spectacularly to bits. Between about 5 of us, we reassembled it. We had several wonderful helpers: Bini and Hugh (singer extraordinaire), Arabella, Pat and John in addition to the four of us (Mike, Jill, Val, Bry). Even so, it took the best part of the weekend to pick and pack away the thousands of potatoes. I hope Jill will post some photos for you to see!