The lovely low winter sun’s back, and our broad bean babies are just starting to open their leaves. The days are getting longer, and our plants are showing it! Our seeds are all ordered for the new season, and we’re already starting to ready our tables for our first batch of Spring sowing.
We’re currently growing our first overwinter crop at Norton in our established beds. We’ve been harvesting rocket and spicy brassica leaves (including mizuna and mustard!) but we’re still waiting on our other wintery leaves, like kale and rainbow chard to grow on a bit before we pick them.
We’re starting to sow some seeds now, such as broad beans and early peas. Starting some seedlings off early in the year not only adds hope to the dreary winter days, but will also help us to tide over the ‘Hungry Gap’ later on in the year (March-May). The Hungry Gap is the time of year when we’ve used up our winter stores of things like carrots, onions and squash, and we’re still awaiting the blooming or fruiting of our summer crops. Some of our favourite Hungry Gap crops include Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Rhubarb and Broad Bean leaves – look out for these in your patron boxes!
Building our ‘Hot Beds’
Some seeds starting at this time of year will need a little bit of heat to get them started. We’re building ‘Hot Beds’ at the nursery with fresh horse manure from the Graves Park Animal Farm (big thanks to Jack and Tom for getting that sorted!). We’re reusing old tonne crates from the warehouse, with mypex left over from ‘Illuminate the Gardens’. We’re hoping that this will create enough passive heat to get some of our more fussy seedlings started off early, such as chillies and peppers and aubergines.
We have the benefit of growing under glass, so our seedlings are a little bit more protected from harsh weather typical of Sheffield winters! This means that we’re also working out how to manage year-round cropping, with successional sowings of things like salads, radishes and spring onions.
Join our next workshop
Successional sowing is perhaps one of the trickiest bits to get right in your garden, so we’re running a workshop to share our tips and tricks! We’ve still got some spaces left for our workshop Crop Planning for early Spring crops / Successive sowing on February 8th – when we’ll be making some of our first vegetable seedlings and flower companions available to purchase – so this is not one to miss out on!
Come along and find out how to get your garden started early.
