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I’m having to water outside (in Scotland.) I’m not watering everything, I’m focusing on onions, beetroot and brassicas. Peas and beans have a long tap root for finding moisture with. Young brassica plants and onions can easily dry out and keel over. Once plants are established they can usually withstand a long dry spell. It rained so much last Winter, the croft was so muddy and we were heartily sick of it. Now, I really think a deluge – maybe at night, would be helpful!

I think it’s safe to say we’re leaving Spring leaf season behind – the courgettes are really revving up now, this dry weather suits them. At the moment all the courgettes are green, there are some yellow and stripey ones coming up soon.

This week there are radishes as well, either purple ones or French breakfast. I’ve no idea why French breakfast radishes are called French breakfast, radishes don’t exactly strike me as breakfast food. I’ve also picked the first proper garlic of the year. I’ve got some undercover and some outside.

There are lots of mini French beans now, I’m pretty sure they will be in the Shares next week and broad beans the week after that. There are tiny baby tomatoes in the Polycrub, the first toms usually take about six weeks to ripen so patience is required. The cucumbers are in the greenhouse and were looking a bit sad, but seem to have got established in the soil now and are growing more vigorously.

At the end of June there will be spaces opening up in the Polycrub and greenhouse. My usual follow on crop is French beans, this year I’ve decided to try Summer squashes as well. Summer squashes did well two years ago, but were no good last year, too cold and wet. I’ve just planted the peppers, they look better than any peppers I’ve ever grown before.

This week’s Small Share (week nine) has salad leaves, sugar snap peas, courgettes, radishes, garlic and Spring greens.

We’re about to start building a shop at our gate. Customers may see some hole digging activity at Croft Share pick up time and the caravan has moved. Moving an old caravan with seized up wheels isn’t very easy. It briefly slipped into the ditch and had to be levered out. We’re getting some new gates, creating a customer zone and building a kind of bus shelter honesty shop. There will be extra veg to buy from there, jam and possibly plants. The fruit crop is looking good so the jams will be blackcurrant, gooseberry and possibly plum.

I’ve finally finished the main block of planting, all the spuds are up and the first brassicas are doing well. I planted two beds of carrots, one looks good. The other looks as though all the baby carrots were devoured by something. I’ll give it a week, then re-sow. For such a ubiquitous vegetable, carrots are really tricky to grow!

This week’s customers will have the first bona fide Summer vegetable. The good weather has produced lots of sugar snap peas, they always add a nice crunch to a salad.

There are some tiny baby French beans in the Polycrub so that’s a bit of a shocker! The earliest I’ve had a French bean in the past is the last week of June. At this rate there will be decent sized French beans in the next week or so.

In July we’ll be moving away from lots of leaves in the direction of lots of legumes! The garlic will be ready soon too, possibly next week, I’ve plenty of salad leaves sown, the kohl rabi is growing and currently not bolting! It’s not growing very fast but maybe one day there will be some kohl rabi in the veg bags. It is supposed to be a very easy, quick vegetable, it just doesn’t seem to like me.

This week’s Small Share (week eight) has salad leaves, cavolo nero, Spring greens, sugar snap peas, coriander and onions/Spring onions.

This week I need to do some slightly risky crop clearing to make way for more of the Summer veg. I say risky because I’m betting on early Summer plants getting a move on! I’m going to pick all the mustard greens so that I can plant some very cool stripey French beans in their place. The lettuce are growing in between the tomatoes and the tomatoes need more room, so out of the ground lettuce must come!

There are a lot of elephant garlic scapes this week and some more Spring onions.

I’ve learned not to count my vegetables before they’re in the bag, but I’m pretty confident there will be sugar snaps, cavolo nero, onions and courgettes in the next few weeks! (All the usual caveats about the weather and plagues of locusts apply.)

At some point a Small Share will have five items (rather than six), once the Summer crops get going and the quantities are a good size.

I will start Large Shares in July. I’m still deciding on when to start Medium, it could be from the start or the middle of June. Medium will have seven different types of veg, Large will be nine plus.

Sadly I think the asparagus kale is winding down, the shoots are getting thinner and trying to flower. There are still plenty of leaves though.

Last year was a terrible year for courgettes, I think I got my first courgette in July. This year I had a courgette flower last Saturday. I don’t know if it’s the weather or the Polycrub. I’ve also got French bean flowers now which is about three weeks earlier than normal. Everything in the Polycrub has suddenly taken off, the tomatoes are thigh high and the broad beans suddenly look more promising. I grew a lot of them over Winter which always makes plants look a bit battered. They are looking a lot healthier. The Polycrub is shaping up to be an excellent growing space.

The plantathon is nearly over, almost everything has been planted. Now the weeding and mulching begins.

This week’s Small Share (week seven) has one or two lettuces (size dependant), mustard greens, asparagus kale/Sutherland kale, spinach, pea shoots and some alliums (see last week.)

This week’s Small Share (week six) has asparagus kale, salad leaves, Spring greens, chard, herbs and some kind of allium.

Alliums are the garlic/onion family. At the moment I have some Spring onions, green garlic and garlic scapes. I’m growing elephant garlic and standard garlic in the greenhouse. A scape is a flowering stalk produced in the Spring. Scapes look like an arrow, just cut off the pointy bit and the stalk can be chopped into batons and fried in olive oil/butter. These are appearing a few at a time so I’ll distribute them over the next few weeks. A website with loads of good garlic recipes is https://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/blogs/recipes.

The herbs will include some sage, I know this is a Christmas herb but that makes no sense at all because it’s at it’s best in May! Garlic scapes and sage, fried in butter sounds like a good combo to me, maybe with Spring greens and a cheese omelette (plenty of eggs in the egg box.)

I keep meaning to write something about packaging. At this time of year most of the veg is of a leafy nature and can’t really be packaged in a paper bag. Unfortunatly there’s nothing quite like plastic for keeping vegetables fresh. Biodegradeable/compostable options are hard to find and more expensive than standard plastic bags. Also I can’t find much info about what the compostable options are made from. It seems unlikely that plant based bags are organic (the price would be stratospheric), are they made from GM crops – I don’t know? I think recyclable plastic bags are probably a better option but not one available to us on Skye.

The compostable/biodegradable bags I’ve been using do appear to break down in a hot composter. I suspect a typical garden compost bin won’t do a good job or may take years. If any customers want to return bags to me I can put them in our hot compost bin. The cloudy bags labelled “compostable” have the best chance of fully composting.

I’m still planting. The end is not in sight, but all the first Summer crops are in the ground, so expect mange tout, broad beans, various broccolies, radishes, cavolo nero, French beans and courgettes in July (poss June.) I’ve just planted something called Austrian tree cabbage, it’s a kind of loose cabbage which grows very tall and can be cut back and allowed to regrow over several years. Let’s hope it tastes good!

The sugar snaps in the Polycrub are flowering so hopefully there will be a small crop of them soon. There are also baby broad beans in there. It’s possibly too hot for a really good crop of broad beans, not a usual problem here, but we’ll have to wait and see. For anyone who hasn’t grown broad beans their flowers have the loveliest scent. I don’t think “eau de broad bean” would sell, but it would smell amazing!

When I was planting the peas I disturbed yet more voles. The babies have no sense of danger and just scuttle around at my feet. The mum seems to have moved them now thankfully. I didn’t spend hours planting peas to feed the next generation of voles.

This week’s Small Share (week five) has asparagus kale, salad leaves, pea shoots, mustard greens, mixed herbs and…..some Spring onions, hurray!

I was in a quandary again this week about exactly what to harvest, the sun has caused quite a lot of veg to be pick-able all at once. I was thinking of picking Spring greens again but they will just slowly turn into a cabbage whereas the mustard greens will bolt if left. Once harvested they regrow very nicely a couple of times.

Last week the salad bags had some lettuce leaves in them, this was the first harvest from the Polycrub – planted at the start of April.

The first four week’s of this year’s veg scheme flew by. I’ve done more planting than ever before in my life..and it’s not over yet. I’ve planted the first lot of broad beans, the sprouts and some broccoli. Potato planting was a team effort. This year’s big bed is much better than last year, I can actually see how a windy field with clay soil can be improved over time.

I think the person who developed asparagus kale should win a prize, what a good vegetable it is for Spring on the Isle of Skye.

The mustard greens are called Green Wave. They are very spicy raw but cooking calms the heat! Really good in a Thai style coconut curry, in a stir fry or in noodle soup. There is no need to remove the stalks.

New for this year I’m doing parsnips and shelling peas. Parsnips are always very patchy in their germination so I’m going to pre-sprout them on some kitchen roll. Someone gave me a lot of paper tubes so I may faff about and let the parsnips grow a bit in tubes of compost and then plant them. Or I may decide I’ve got far too much to do and not do any of that!

For those following the kohlrabi saga – some kohlrabi have resisted the slug onslaught and are growing! As they are showing a will to survive I think I’ll mulch round them with some nice sieved compost and see what happens next. Experiments are always a bit annoying – I do a few rows of something and if it’s brilliant I wish I’d done more, if it’s rubbish I resent the waste of good growing space!

This week’s Small Share (week four) has asparagus kale, salad leaves, green garlic, red Russian kale, chard and mixed herbs.

I was in two minds this week about whether to start picking the Spring onions. There would have been a few per customer. I decided patience is a virtue and will wait for more to be ready at once. Spring onions left in the ground just turn into bigger Spring onions, they don’t grow into an actual onion and they don’t seem to bolt.

The red Russian kale is the one with the frilly edges and the pink ribs. It is good in soup, stews, curry and stir fries.

I’ll do a smaller bag of chard this time and put in the remaining spinach. The spinach plants have resisted bolting and have produced a few more big leaves.

The salad leaves are a mix of rocket, pea shoots, sorrel and mustard leaves. There might be some lettuce leaves soon.

The plantathon continues – the Polycrub is filling up, now we need some irrigation as the watering is taking ages.

In the greenhouse I have to juggle the over Wintered veg that I’m still picking with Summer veg which needs to be planted. I have to maintain a constant supply of baby plants to fill in any gaps. All the little brassicas and legumes are waiting to go outside.

In the middle of May the second big round of planting begins, all the brassicas can go outside and I spend a lot of time staring anxiously at them looking for signs of a creature attack. This year I have a new pest to contend with – Leatherjackets. These are Daddy Long Legs babies. I like Daddy Long Legs but not their unpleasant offspring. These horrid little grubs eat roots, which is pretty unhelpful. They seem to be concentrated in the net tunnel so I’m going to plant mostly legumes in there as the Leatherjackets don’t seem to like them. It’s a good place for peas and beans as it’s nice and sheltered.

The hens are still laying with gusto if anyone would like to reserve some eggs.

This week’s Small Share (week three) has purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus kale, salad leaves, Spring greens, basil and pea shoots.

I’ve not grown asparagus kale before, I’m very impressed with it. It grew over Winter then started producing spears at exactly the right moment. I have one patch of it in the back field (where the weather is) and that has proved very hardy. I’ve no idea how long it will keep producing spears, a few more weeks I would guess. It seems to need less cooking than other stem types of broccoli.

The rocket in the salad mix is super peppery, it’s very good in a salad paired with the pea shoots.

The purple sprouting broccoli will be a smaller portion this week. So far the PSB has come from the net tunnel but now it looks like it’s winding down. I have some that was planted later in the greenhouse as well. There may be a PSB gap as one lot finishes and the other lot revs up!

Spring greens are cabbage leaves, left alone the plants would turn into pointy cabbages. I never do a lot with Spring greens, just wash and wilt in a pan with a little water, then drain and smother in butter! This is really good as an accompaniment to lentil dal.

I have a few experimental crops on the go – celeriac and kohlrabi in the greenhouse. I’m not hopeful for the kohlrabi, it really is a slug magnet. I’ve got the little plants surrounded with slug deterrents all to no avail. Maybe some will make it through. I find the Spring to be the worst time for pest attack, wild plants aren’t really growing so a nice tender little brassica is very tempting for a slug (or vole.) Brassicas planted in the autumn are all big enough to shrug off a little nibbling. Organic gardening is often painted as a lovely, natural way of growing in harmony with nature. In reality I spend most of my time trying to fend off nature.

The tomato plants are back in the caravan overnight. I’m trying to avoid potting them on, I’d like to plant them in the soil next week so I need it to not be really cold at night. French beans are a bit tougher so they’re staying in the Polycrub full time.

This week I’ve planted more potatoes, the rest of the onions, all the sugar snaps in the wonder crub and some dwarf French beans, also in the Polycrub. April and May are always very leafy months, with brassicas, salad leaves, chard etc, I’d like to have some peas and beans in the mix in June.

I have loads of eggs (chicken or duck) if any Share customers would like some I can put them aside. £1.90 for six, cash on collection.

This week’s Small Share (week two) has purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus kale, salad leaves, pea shoots, chard and parsley.

Pea shoots are delicious raw or can be treated a bit like spinach. They really do taste like peas.

When processing the salad leaves I wear disposable, bio-degradeable gloves. I briefly dunk all the leaves in cold water then spin in a salad spinner. This helps keep the salad leaves fresh in the fridge, they still need to be washed before eating. A good tip for keeping any leafy veg fresh is to put a small amount of water in the bag with them and seal.

The chard has been growing over the Winter and there are some really big leaves. The whole leaf and stalk can be eaten. There is no need to remove the stems, they aren’t stringy and cook really well in soup, stews, curry etc. I try not to give customers things which can’t be eaten, for example broccoli leaves are good as a cabbage substitute and beetroot leaves are delicious in soup. Chard is great in curries as a spinach substitute. My favourite website for a veggie curry recipe is www.vegrecipesofindia.com. Some of the recipes have ingredients which might be hard to source on the Isle of Skye, but google can always suggest a substitute!

The weather’s been most obliging this week, more of that please! I made good headway with the potatoes and onions. Last year we grew all the spuds in two big ploughed areas. The first earlies didn’t do too well so this year I’ve put them in raised beds with plenty of seaweed. I’m planting a selection of other potatoes as well – Charlotte because they are usually very reliable, Belle de Fontenay because it sounds so fancy and Arran Victory because they make the worlds best roasties. I’ve still got some to plant and they will be going in a ploughed area so fingers crossed the slugs have found something else to chomp on.

The Polycrub planting is progressing, it’s seriously warm in there. I’ve started acclimatising the tomatoes in advance of planting them much to the relief of my long suffering family. For the past month the tomatoes have been in a caravan during the day and sat in the bath overnight! Early broad beans have been planted in the Polycrub, I’ve tried to usher a few bees in there to aid with pollination.

Next week I’ll be continuing with potato planting, sugar snaps in the Polycrub, maybe tomatoes and dwarf French beans. If we are plunged back into Winter the tomatoes will be back in the bath!

Well, the Winter flew by, and here we are again at the start of this year’s Croft Shares. This year I’m doing three sizes, Small, Medium and Large. Small is available now until the end of the season. I’ll be starting Medium and Large in June, possibly July for the Large size.

Small contains 5, occasionally 6 different crops. This week’s Share has six items – purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus kale, a big bag of mixed salad leaves, spinach, chives and green garlic.

Asparagus kale is not asparagus, it’s a type of kale that’s been bred to produce broccoli type spears in the Spring. Use much as you would purple sprouting broccoli, e.g. stir fry, boil, steam, put on a pizza, smother in cheese sauce etc… This kale also has nice tasty leaves so I’ll include some of those too.

The salad bags are a peppery/lemony mix of mustards, rocket, lambs lettuce, and sorrel.

I grew the spinach as an experiment over Winter in the greenhouse. Of course I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t plant more. It looked truly pathetic all Winter long, then two weeks ago started producing beautiful, big, glossy leaves. The spinach season is very short, the plants will bolt, probably next week, so this is possibly a tasty, one off harvest. My favourite use for spinach is in a curry, the smaller leaves could be added to a salad.

Green garlic is an immature garlic plant. It looks like a spring onion and can be used as such, giving a garlicky kick to salads or a sandwich. It can be used like garlic in soups, stews and sauces. The leaves are edible as well as the white bit.

The next few weeks will include lots more broccoli, asparagus kale and salad leaves. I’ve got pea shoots coming up, lots of colourful chard and Spring greens. I always grow onions and spring onions over Winter in the greenhouse. This year they suffered from sustained slug attack, a problem I’ve not encountered before. A decent portion made it through though and there will be plenty to go around.

I’ll be planting more Spring onions outside soon and they are usually ready in mid June.

The Polycrub is shaping up to be a brilliant growing space, it’s really warm and not at all rattly. If it’s windy I don’t feel like it’s all about to come crashing down on my head. I’m planting broad beans, sugar snap peas and lettuce in there for June, as well as some dwarf French beans which may crop earlier than the climbing variety. The tomatoes are also going in this space, I know all my customers love tomatoes. Nothing really beats the flavour of a croft grown, Isle of Skye tomato.

This weekend I’ll be starting planting potatoes and onions, more on that next week.

This week we had one lovely day and several windy, wet days. I spent most of one windy day carding wool. My hands are now super soft!

We have two Hebridean sheep, Penny and Wotsit. They are very elderly and perpetually grumpy, but their fleece is lovely and is really good for making felt.

The first stage of the felting process is to delegate shearing to someone bigger than me. Penny submits to this fairly calmly, Wotsit fights like her life depends on it.

The second stage involves washing the fleece. I have no idea how an expert would do this, I cut the fleece up into smaller pieces and soak it in warm water with ecover washing up liquid.

After about four hours I drain the water and soak again in warm water without soap. I do this one more time then hang the fleece pieces up to dry. Yes, it takes ages to dry.

Once dry the wool is carded and formed into small fluffy creatures which can be used to make felt. This process involves bubble wrap, an old net curtain, a door mat, warm water, soap, a piece of pipe insulation and patience!

Penny and Wotsit’s fleeces have a lovely range of colours in them. Their wool felts pretty easily and I use some bought, dyed wool to create a pattern.

These photos are a reminder that the sun does sometimes shine on us and very occasionally shorts are in order!