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As usual the Winter has gone by in a flash. After a brief dry spell we are back to squelching around in the mud. Some of the jobs on the “to do” list have been done, the rest might never get done! The greenhouse has been fixed, it’s a lot warmer, less rattly and we’ve got some extra growing space in there as well. The net tunnel has been improved, all the paths have been dug down to the clay layer so the veg bed is draining well and there should be less weed pressure. At the moment the net tunnel is pretty full of onions and garlic, these should be ready in June or July.

The tomato plants are growing well and it’s boiling in the Polycrub despite the weather so I should be able to plant them out in there before the end of April. The Polycrub already has a nice neat row of courgettes, lots of salad leaves and some bulb fennel. I’ve not grown fennel before, I know it’s prone to bolting but I’m always on the hunt for crops that can provide a bit of variety in June.

Last year was Bornaskitaig Year of the Vole! Fingers crossed there are fewer of these destructive little vandals around in 2024. They are super cute, but really like to eat a nice tender broccoli plant with a beetroot and carrot salad on the side. I’m implementing a variety of anti vole measures. I’ll only be planting yellow carrots as for some reason they weren’t appealing to voles. All the French beans and early mange tout are going to have a protective sleeve round the bottom. There’s not much I can do to protect beetroot, so it’s fingers crossed on that front too. One upside to the high vole numbers is that they appear to have eaten all the slugs and leather jackets – so far I don’t think I’ve lost a single Spring onion to slugs.

The veg beds outside are all waiting for better weather really, we can’t plough or start the potato planting while it’s so wet. Planting spuds into cold, wet soil does them no favours, so it’s better to wait a bit. Our best yield has always been from the second earlies so this year we’re concentrating on those.

This week is the first week of Croft Shares 2024. Spring veg includes lots of leafy greens, perfect stir fries and salads. For the first eight to twelve weeks I’m doing Small shares; Medium and Large will start in June or July once the Summer crops get going.

This weeks Croft Shares will have – mixed salad leaves, pea shoots, asparagus kale, red ursa kale, leeks and chives. The pea shoots can be eaten raw or used in a stir fry, the asparagus kale is a broccoli type spear which can be used in the same way as sprouting broccoli, red ursa kale is a rare variety which has pink ribs and very pretty, frilly leaves. The leeks are a bit of a surprise, I planted them last summer and they’ve grown very nicely over the Winter. Because it’s so cold they haven’t bolted – silver linings I suppose! Although a bit more warmth would be helpful now.

I’ve finally got on top of sorting out the net tunnel. Huge mountains of weeds and crop detritus has been removed. Dylan was so enthusiastic in his weed pulling that he also removed some chives and oregano. Never mind, I’ve plenty of herb clumps and it’s great to be rid of all the dock. In place of the dock are nice, neat rows of onions and garlic. Two things the furry menace doesn’t want to eat! I don’t usually grow lots of onions and garlic outside over Winter so this is a bit of an experiment.

I’m planning to dig out the paths in the net tunnel, put all the soil in the middle and construct one very large raised bed. The trend these days is not to have wooden sides on beds but I find they help keep the weeds at bay.

The windy weather has reminded me that it’s time to start collecting seaweed. I put a lot of seaweed on the raised beds and in the net tunnel last Winter, so I’ll probably not bother in those areas this year. I’ll put it on the big outside bed and in the Polycrub instead. I know there can be a problem with salt building up in soil that has had a lot of seaweed added so it’s probably better to move the stuff around anyway. It’s great to have a free resource so nearby.

This is the last week of Croft Shares for this year; it all begins again next April! Next week I’ll be basket weaving and felting in earnest. I won’t write this blog every week all Winter, I don’t suppose anyone needs constant updates on the mud situation (currently not bad.) I will write a bit about felt, baskets and the Christmas markets.

This week’s Croft Shares will have:

Sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli, salad leaves, chard, red cabbage and a few leeks or onions.

Anyone that subscribed last year may remember the vast red cabbages I grew. This years are a more modest and probably more manageable size!

I’ve made no progress in the net tunnel! The boys are on holiday for two weeks so I think I’ll have to get them to help. We’ve a few weeks yet in the garlic planting window so it’s not too urgent. We can’t get the idea of covering the net tunnel in polycarbonate out of our head so the croft apprentice is going to price it up. That might put an end to the whole scheme, we’ll have to see. It does seem like the obvious way to develop the business though. There are plenty of things that will grow outside here perfectly happily, but undercover spaces are essential really for Spring veg and variety in the Summer. An outside only veg scheme would be a lot of leaves and brassicas, not that there’s anything wrong with that but we’re all used to some sunshine on our plates these days. The vole explosion this year did demonstrate just how vulnerable outside crops can be. If I was an organic beetroot farmer, this year would have been a disaster!

The market prep is going well, the jelly set (hurray.) There’s not a lot of of it so I’ll be using the international gold standard to fix the price. Ozzy and I have also made plum and pear jam.

I think I’ve enough jam now so I’m moving on to basket weaving and felting. Felting always produces something usable. Basket weaving can go horribly wrong right at the end so is a bit more stressful! I’m trying to use up all the left over willow before I buy any more. I’d like to incorporate some of our willow but I need to wait for the leaves to come off before I can cut it.

This week’s Croft Shares will have:

Sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli, salad leaves, tree cabbage, red cabbage and some herbs.

Rocket, Ozzy and I picked all the crab apples and loads of rosehips for rosehip and apple jelly making. Quite a lot of the crab apples had blown off the tree and been happily devoured by Snowy, a very elderly cockerel. Still we managed to rescue enough of them from the wind and the chicken. We’ve boiled and strained them. The next step is measuring and boiling with sugar, then nervously waiting to see if it’s set properly. This is part of my Christmas market prep. I’m fitting this in with planting for the Spring. I’ve lots of onion sets and garlic to go in the net tunnel, but first I have to clear it which I’m not looking forward to. It’s full of brassica remains and dock. Last year a blackbird kept relocating the garlic. I found it popping up in strange locations, a long way from where I’d planted it. This time I think I’ll cover the beds with green net. The blackbird has also been excluded from the greenhouse by all the repairs. Basically we’re ruining his life, he’ll have to eat seed heads and worms like other, lesser birds.

The greenhouse repairs are going really well. The glass along the sides has been replaced with polycarbonate and there’s a wooden skirt along the bottom. It’s much warmer and sturdier. So far most of these repairs have been done with bits left over from the Polycrub kit. We are now eyeing the net tunnel and contemplating covering it with polycarbonate. It would be a massive job, but now we’ve had this idea we’re finding it hard to ignore. It would be a huge under cover space and there are fruit trees in there which I think would love to be relocated to a climate more like Spain, less like Scotland. There are a couple of apple trees which we might need to move, but even quite big trees can be moved in the Winter. See? I’ve talked myself into another big project which will no doubt take ages and create a huge mess, but the thought of three big undercover spaces is very tempting, think of all the tomatoes! This would be a job for Summer 2024 though, too many other things on the schedule right now.

This week’s Croft Shares will have:

Small – sprouts, broccoli, chard, Shetland kale and possibly parsnips, .

Medium – Sprouts, broccoli, red cabbage, one of the Summer crops, swede, chard and possibly parsnips.

I’m saying “possibly” parsnips as I know there are some decent sized ones, I just don’t know how many. If there aren’t many I’ll put something else in as well.

The Shetland kale forms a loose, cabbage like head, rather than loose leaves like standard kale.

As I’m winding down the Croft Share weekly veg scheme over the next few weeks I thought I’d write a run down of the good, the pretty good and the ugly of the 2023 season.

Good: Obviously the amazing Polycrub. What an excellent growing environment it is – very warm, but not too much condensation. The tomatoes did brilliantly in this space and for the first time ever we had a really good crop of peppers. The Polycrub was also good for some extra early French beans and sugar snaps.

Broccoli – I think I’ve picked some form of broccoli most weeks since March. This brassica really likes it in Bornaskitaig.

All the other brassicas, cabbage, kale and Spring greens. These plants didn’t love the long dry spell in June but they grew well in the end.

Yellow courgettes, I don’t know why they’ve done so well this year, they just did!

Second early potatoes – I’ve yet to find a maincrop potato that I’m really satisfied with, but Charlottes and every other second early I’ve grown have always done well. I think for next year we should just concentrate on what works and grow lots of second earlies and do some trials of a few different maincrops. The downside of second earlies is that they can’t really be left in the soil once they’re ready. But here anything left for too long in the ground suffers from slug attack anyway.

Onions – the onions did very well this year, very little bolting and there’s something very satisfying about pulling up onions.

Mange tout – always reliable, they even escaped the attention of the voles.

Pretty good: French beans did suffer from some furry vandal biting through the stems. Luckily this happened over a few weeks rather than all at once. We’ve a plan involving aluminium tubes for next year.

Ugly: Anyone who’s read this blog can guess I’m going to say voles! They ate nearly all the beetroot and most of the carrots. They also had a bit of a chew on some of the brassicas.

The long dry spell in June was lovely at the time, but it did have a downside. Most of the slugs were killed off, but other pests that I’m not used to dealing with really benefitted. First there was a plague of leather jackets in the net tunnel. Strangley I haven’t seen a corresponding quantity of Daddy Long legs so I’m wondering if the voles did do me one small favour and ate all the leather jackets. Nature is brutal!

In the greenhouse I twice had a problem with green caterpillars, although they were pretty easy to just remove and relocate to inside a chicken’s stomach. The final pest in the pest parade of 2023 was red spider mite. I always get a bit of this but it’s never really been a problem before. This year there was more of it, they suck the life out of things like French beans. Next year I’ll need to be more vigilant and remove any sign of it. No doubt I’ll plan 2024 with an attack strategy for leather jackets, voles, green caterpillars and red spider mite and it’ll be cold and wet all Spring and it’ll be my old foe the slug that I’m dealing with.

This week’s Croft Shares have the following:

Small – sprouts and tops, Winter squash, sugar snaps, tomatoes and kale. If the sugar snaps have been damaged by the weather I might have to put something else in instead.

Medium – Leeks, sprouts, broccoli, red cabbage, swede mustard greens and something else, not sure what yet. There are small quantities of some of the remaining summer crops, I can’t be sure how much there is until I pick them.

It does suddenly feel quite Autumnal. We have a mini woodland on our croft, sadly we don’t see the usual range of autumn colours as the leaves die and fall to the ground. What tends to happen is we’ll have a day or two of strong South Westerlies and all the leaves will be blown off the trees. Autumn over and done with in the space of a few hours! I do find the sudden leaf dump pretty useful as a mulch though.

This week’s veg harvest follows the Autumnal theme – leeks, sprouts, kale and Winter Squash are all on the menu. I’ll be winding the weekly veg scheme down for this year over the next few weeks and aiming to start it all again in next Spring. The greenhouse is partially planted with Spring crops, the Polycrub has salad leaves in one bed and I’ve lots of brassicas outside. I normally plant the outside Spring crops in the net tunnel as it’s nice and sheltered. Unfortunately the net tunnel has been the centre of all the vole activity so the brassicas are in the back field. I’m going to grow lots of garlic in the net tunnel over Winter as nothing wants to eat that. Next year I have to make better use of the net tunnel. It’s the one place I’ve done proper “no-dig,” this works as a growing method, it just doesn’t work for me as a weed control, I prefer raised beds and clearly defined edges. I’m going to dig the paths in the net tunnel to below the level of the topsoil and make one, big wooden sided bed. That’ll probably take all Winter, but will definitely make a better growing space.

The greenhouse repairs are going well, it’s already a lot less rattly. The Polycrub is hotter than the greenhouse but the greenhouse has atmosphere, I often do my basket weaving in there as the light is so nice.

This week’s Croft Shares have the following:

Small – Leeks, sprouts, chard, purple sprouting broccoli and courgettes/Summer squash.

Medium – Leeks, sprouts and tops, broccoli, kale, sugar snaps or tomatoes, Winter squash and a pepper.

Large – Leeks, sprouts and tops, broccoli, kale, spinach, courgettes, Winter squash, tomatoes, Lazy Housewife beans or a pepper and salad leaves.

The Winter squash are Uchiki Kuri, they can be used in the same way to Butternut. I’ve no idea how big the Lazy Housewife beans are supposed to be, the ones I’ve got range from 5 to 10cms, taste nice and are stringless, there just aren’t a lot of them.

The tomatoes are dwindling in numbers, I’ll continue to share them out for as long as they still taste good and keep on ripening.

This point in the year feels a bit like June. In June the Spring crops are slowing down out and the Summer veg just revving up, there’s a lot of variety, but everything is in slightly unhelpful quantities! At the moment the Summer crops are slowing down, French beans are petering out and yes, the tomatoes aren’t growing with quite the same gusto! Deciding which Autumn veg to start picking is really dictated by what has to be picked or it will bolt/be eaten by something, and what can stand outside and wait. The recent wild fluctuations in temperatures are ideal leek bolting conditions so this week I’ll be picking leeks. Better a small leek than a bolted leek! I’m going to pick a few sprouts and some red cabbage too.

I think this week will be one of the last outside salad leaf pickings, I’m hoping indoor salad will take over again in the next few weeks. Leafy veg doesn’t like being undercover in July and August, too much daylight and too hot. They do really from September though, the chard is looking lovely again in the greenhouse and I’ve got kale in there for next Spring which is big enough to eat now.

The “Lazy Housewife” beans that I wrote about several months ago, finally have some beans on them. They were described as a late variety, this seems very late though. The problem with any veg taking such a long time to reach maturity is there are just too many months for some creature to damage the plants. In this case, something, I’m not sure what, bit through the stems of about two thirds of the plant. The plants that survived have short, flat pods on them. The actual beans start developing fairly quickly but the whole thing, pod and immature bean can just be chopped up and eaten.

I did two markets last week, I’ve another next week then a sort of rest until November and various Christmas markets! I think the combination of veg subscribers and craft markets works really well, we just need to build up a lot more stock this Winter. Of course I’ll have nowhere to put it…what I really need is a large, insulated, heated shed!

This week’s Croft Shares have the following:

Small – Leeks, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes and a red cabbage.

Medium – Leeks, purple sprouting broccoli, peppers, courgettes/Summer squash, French beans, spinach and salad leaves.

Large – Leeks, broccoli, peppers, courgettes/Summer squash, tomatoes, mustard greens, sprouts, salad leaves, chard and something else, not sure what yet!

The Summer squash are the snakey looking ones, just chop off the head and discard (this is where the seeds are,) then slice the rest and use like courgette. It makes a good creamed courgette soup.

2023 has been a brilliant year for birds on the croft – I mean the small, tweeting kind, not the chicken and duck kind. We always have lots of Wrens, Sparrows, Starlings a few Blackbirds and the obligatory Robin. This year there is a large community of Goldfinches down the side of the drive and masses of Swallows. I’m not sure where the Swallows are nesting but they enjoy dive bombing the croft. The Sparrows and Wrens live harmoniously together, but the Goldfinches seem to be having a turf war with the Swallows. The Blackbirds spend most of their time trying to figure out how to get into the fruit cage, once they’re in there of course they can’t figure out how to get back out again and a human has to go and chase them round and round. The Wrens view the greenhouse as their own personal property, they help me out by eating slugs and caterpillars. If I get too close they do a lot of angry clicking.

The smaller birds seem to appreciate hawthorn bushes as a nice safe place to build a nest. Once the leaves fall off the trees we start finding little nests, mostly in the hawthorn.

I have two markets this week, if I sell a lot at the first one I think a lot of high speed jam making will be on the agenda.

I’m managing to resist picking the sprouts for this week anyway, I think I’ll start on the Autumn veg next week. There are some leek sized leeks, there’s always a danger leeks will bolt in September, hopefully the warm spell forecast will convince them it’s still Summer and not time to flower. Better to pick them on the small side, than bigger and bolting. There weren’t many bolted onions this year, hopefully the leeks will be similar.

The peppers are ripening fast now, and there are more flowers on the plants. I can’t imagine there’s time for more peppers to mature fully, but there might be some smaller, green ones.

This week’s Croft Shares have the following:

Small – Tomatoes, peppers, purple sprouting broccoli, French beans and tree cabbage.

Medium – Tomatoes, peppers, purple sprouting broccoli, green broccoli, mustard greens, courgettes and tree cabbage.

Large – Tomatoes, peppers, purple sprouting broccoli, French beans, dazzling blue kale, tree cabbage, courgettes/Summer squash, salad leaves, onions and potatoes.

The mustard greens are called green wave. It is very spicy eaten raw, but loses the heat on cooking. It’s very good in a coconut curry and I think it would be good in noodle soup.

It’s the point in the year when I start eyeing the Autumn crops and wondering if I should begin picking them. I will manage to resist, it’s still August, not really sprout time yet! I would normally leave the bulk of the carrots until mid September but I’ve seen signs of vole activity around them so I’m going to pull up all the carrots over the next two weeks. I’d rather not have my harvesting calendar dictated by small furry creatures but I suppose that’s the nature of organic growing. I have to work with nature even when I feel like nature’s out to get me.

There are eight week’s left in this year’s weekly veg scheme, out of a total of twenty eight. I’ve started sowing follow on crops in the Polycrub and greenhouse for October, it’s much pleasanter picking salad leaves undercover in the Autumn rather than outside in a windy field. Anything sown now undercover can be left over Winter for picking again in the Spring.

I have a stall at a Craft Market in Minginish next week so I’m trying to fit in some willow weaving and felt making. I can do small willow projects when I’m waiting for customer pick ups on Tuesday and Wednesday, actual baskets need a whole afternoon with no interruptions. Felt making needs a big table and makes a mess so not really a good waiting in the caravan activity.

This week’s Croft Shares have the following:

Small – Tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, carrots and salad leaves.

Medium – Tomatoes, potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli, French beans, peppers, cauliflower or a big green broccoli and carrots.

Large – Tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, carrots, summer squash/courgettes, salad leaves, spinach, beetroot, mange tout and onions.

There is a little bit of beetroot from outside that escaped the voles. They’re definitely in the baby beetroot category so are sweet enough to eat raw.

I’ve planted most of my outside overwintering Spring crops. They all look a bit flat after the blast of wind at the weekend. Ideally Spring crops are planted with enough time to reach a decent size before Winter. Then they look sad all Winter and start growing again in March, that’s the theory anyway.

The wind gave the greenhouse a good shake and some emergency repairs were required. The French beans and courgettes all survived though. I’ve some experimental celeriac in the greenhouse which has grown a lot of very impressive leaves but not a lot of root so far. My experiments this year have been a bit hit and miss – the kohl rabi tasted nice but grew so slowly there wasn’t much point to them as a hungry gap crop, the various types of cauliflower have produced some nice green caulis which I will grow again and the pepper crop in the Polycrub is very successful. I think that last one is more to do with the weather than anything I’ve done.

On the potato front I’ve dug up about half of the really big bed. The soil there is lovely now, I’m looking forward to growing something else there next year, I’m thinking leeks, onions, beetroot and some of the shorter brassicas.

After quite a long tidy spell we’re back to an untidy croft. The back field is pretty good but the net tunnel is being overtaken by dock. I need to rethink how that space is organised for next year. Keeping the paths weed free is virtually impossible, but I’m not really a fan of putting down black plastic. On the plus side there is a lovely crop of apples in the net tunnel. The trees in there were only planted three years ago and have grown very nicely.

This week’s Croft Shares have the following:

Small – Tomatoes (cherry and cooking,) French beans, purple sprouting broccoli, Summer squash and peppers.

Medium – Tomatoes, French beans, broccoli or a small cauliflower, courgettes, mange tout, salad leaves and tree cabbage.

Large – Tomatoes (cherry and cooking,) French beans, courgettes, broccoli, potatoes, salad leaves, kale, onions and parsley.