Plot Lines

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!

I’ve been thinking for a while that a garden diary/blog would be a nice addition to this website. It’s possible that there are a few gardeners out there might find the travails of a West coast market gardener of interest. As a veg grower of many years I know that the general gardening advice for Scottish growers isn’t any use to those of us in the path of regular gale force winds and Summers with not much sunshine! I’ve actually found some blogs written by gardeners in Alaska whose insight is more helpful to me on Skye than standard UK advice. Our Winters are dark, our growing season short, the Spring is cold and the Summer can be wet! On the upside in the Summer we have plenty of light, my soil is very good, outdoor watering is rarely required and the Winters are mild so growing brassicas in the Winter is possible.

In the Spring and Summer I’ll post weekly updates of the Croft Share harvest along with some general croft news and probably a lot of complaining about the weather and slugs.

At the moment I’m mostly mulching! I cover most veg beds with a mix of seaweed, manure, old hay, wood ash and leaves. I put cardboard down on the paths and top this with wood chip. This cardboard/woodchip arrangement usually suppresses the weeds until about August. In August the weeds suddenly get wildly out of control and everything looks really untidy! In January everything is soaking wet but pleasantly weed free.

It’s almost time to start sowing again. I’ll be starting the tomatoes in a propagator under a grow light this week. This always causes a few problems in our small house as all the plants take up quite a lot of room. I need at least 80 tomato plants, they don’t take up much space for the first few weeks but by March it feels a bit like the house is being taken over by triffids. After that it’s time to sow all the onions, leeks and some leafy veg.
I’ve just planted 50 early seed potatoes in the greenhouse. I’ve done this in the past with a lot of success until last year. Tatties planted under cover in January are usually ready in June. I did this in 2022 and for the first time the potato plants were destroyed by slugs. This just shows how wet it was last Spring, slugs aren’t usually a major problem under cover. This year I’ve put the seed potatoes along the driest edge of the greenhouse, so fingers crossed for a nice potato surprise in June.

If the weather is too awful I have a few indoor activities. There’s the things I don’t relish like IT and accounts, and the good stuff like felt making and basket weaving for our Etsy shop.

I started learning to weave willow baskets a few years ago. After many attempts I became proficient in producing a simple round basket. The first baskets I made were woven with a very forgiving four rod weave. This year I’ve been experimenting with different weaving techniques and have completed several baskets with handles. This is a difficult skill to master but it’s very satisfying to produce something that’s actually useful. All my practice baskets are still in use around the croft and have proved to be very sturdy, if a bit wonky.

Here are some recent creations. I really like the asymmetric, stick handled style, it feels like I’m doing carpentry! It’s good to incorporate a bit of wood that I’ve grown. I can do commissions in either of the styles shown. Or visit our Etsy shop to see what’s available.