What to do with your bean roots

 When clearing up your old frazzled bean or pea plants, do make sure that you leave the roots in the soil. The reason for doing so is, that came mid winter, the little nodules will explode in the soil and realise much needed nitrogen. 

Your main planting of spring cabbage should take place now so that they are well on their way before winter gets a grip.

Now is the time to prune your summer Raspberries. You do this by cutting out all the old fruiting wood at the base, leaving the young shoots to grow and produce fruit for next year. You should still be harvesting Autumn fruit.

Prune Raspberries

 When clearing up your old frazzled bean or pea plants, do make sure that you leave the roots in the soil. The reason for doing so is, that came mid winter, the little nodules will explode in the soil and realise much needed nitrogen. 

Your main planting of spring cabbage should take place now so that they are well on their way before winter gets a grip.

Now is the time to prune your summer Raspberries. You do this by cutting out all the old fruiting wood at the base, leaving the young shoots to grow and produce fruit for next year. You should still be harvesting Autumn fruit.

New Strawberries

 To help stop your fruit tree getting caterpillar trouble next year, now is the time to place grease bands around the trunks of your trees. About three feet off the ground.

By the way, I have also noticed that in doing so, it also stops rats climbing up the tree to take fruit. So the grease is a two way guard against : rats and caterpillars.

If you have in mind to start a new bed of strawberries, this is the last week really to do it. Choose a south facing bed if possible to get early fruit in June.

If you still have tomatoes in the ground, it is best to pick everything you have now.

Place the fruit on a sunny window ledge to ripen them, or you can make chutney with them which will last right though the year.

How to Avoid Split Carrots:

 It is a great mistake to leave your carrots and beets in the ground at this time of year.

Dig them up and store them.

There is a danger that the carrots will split and the beets will become course and unfit to eat.

Water you peas, if it is dry, to swell them up before you finish with them.

Do tidy up dead leaves off Kale and the like because the slugs are always seeking somewhere to hid.

Spring Cabbage:

 Your Spring cabbage from your July sowing should now be large enough to plant out now and there is no better place than the plot that is now free after your spring sownOnions.

No need to dig the plot, just give it a good rake. The reason is that if your dig it will make the soil too lose to hold your plant in the winter.

Also, hoe all your young plants, by doing this it will encourage the young plants to grow be fore the on set of winter.

It is not too late to sow Cauliflower in a cold frame for summer cop next year.

Dig up main crop potatoes

 Now is the time to start thinking about lifting your main crop potatoes, provided they were planted in April.

Try and do the job on a dry and windy day and leave the potatoes on the ground about an hour to help them to dry out. Doing this helps the skin to harden off, so to speak.

You must be ruthless and reject any that have got any sign of not being "perfect"

Also another job for this week is to walk through your BrusselsSprouts, taking off all the lower leaves.

Doing so helps the formation of the sprout. As you are doing this it is a good idea to firm the ground at the base of the plant. Doing this helps the plant grow straight.  

Kale Stem Cuttings

 If you have never taken stem cutting before, do not worry, it is not magic.

I take stem cutting from my Taunton Dean Kale every winter.

Step one:    Carefully take a few shoots from the side of the kale.

Step two:     Fill a small pot with good compost.

Stem three:  Make a hole in the compost and put the kale cutting in and firm the compost     

                     around the kale.

Step four:     Place in a cold frame or somewhere out of the weather and keep moist.

You should see some sings of life from four to six weeks, if not, try again. You can take stem cuttings from kale from Sept-March.

Do not do this!

 There is a note going round our allotment, which says you do not need to burn your Blight Tomatoes.

Just put them on the compost heap. The reason that they give is that : Blight only lives on living matter.

Believe me: If you get Blight on your crops, you must burn them and do not grow tomatoes on that ground for at least three years.

Do not compost them> 

Organic Growing

 What is organic farming? How it promotes healthy living? Organic farming is a form of agriculture that relies crop production on green manure, compost, and biological pest control instead of using pesticides and herbicides. Therefore such process can help individuals have a healthy lifestyle because of the absence of chemical content.

These organic agricultural methods are internationally regulated and legally enforced by many nations. In our cooperative, all our suppliers' farms are fair-trade and organically certified by an international certifying body. Fair-trade in the sense that we follow the international fair-trade protocol especially in terms of wage compliance requirements and child labor laws. Organic also because the only allowed fertilizer in our farms is SALT. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony.

With the increasing environmental awareness of the general public here and abroad the originally supply-driven organic movement transforms into a demand-driven one. For coconut farmers, premium prices attracted farmers to convert their farms into organic.

Organic farming methods is a mixture of scientific knowledge of ecology and modern technology because practices are based on naturally occurring biological processes. It is also concerned with protecting the environment and working in harmony with existing ecosystems, including conserving water, soil and energy, and using renewable resources and natural farming cycles.

Moreover, organic foods are not necessarily completely chemical free. They may be grown on land not previously used for organic food production and, therefore, might contain chemical residues. However, the pesticide residues in organic food are considerably lower than those found in foods produced with synthetic chemicals.

Most people buy organically-grown food products because they are concerned about pesticides, additives, antibiotics or other chemical residues. Although pesticide residues in fruit and vegetables are monitored, many people believe organic food is healthier. Some people worry about the long-term health, economic and environmental consequences of genetically manufactured foods and choose organic foods.

Organic foods promote healthier and more sustainable use of natural resources. Modern farming methods, including excessive use of chemicals, have led to a decline in soil fertility, and an increase in salinity and blue-green algae in waterways over many years. Organic farmers try to minimize damage to the environment by using physical weed control, and animal and green manure.

Organic food is often more expensive than conventionally-produced food because organic farming generally operates on a smaller scale. The production is more labor intensive and yields are generally smaller. It is a known fact that when you use herbicides and pesticides, you get high production.

Despite this problem, when we patronize organic products, we have a guarantee that our lives would be healthier, safer and longer.

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