New Year in the Vegetable Garden

Swede from a June sowing, we’ve been harvesting swedes from the June sowing since early November.

I thought it might be interesting to start the New Year by showing what’s in the vegetable garden at the moment with a selection of photographs taken yesterday afternoon. Some of the crops are for our own consumption over the winter months whilst the hotel is shut and others are in preparation for when the hotel opens on the 1^st of April.

I sow a winter spinach about once a month from August onwards and this is ready for eating now is from a late September sowing.

The first sowing of Mange Tout made 9/11 and should be ready for the first guests in April. We will make a total of 3 sowings the last sowing being made mid February.

Our first sowing of broad beans; sown late October should be ready early May. We’ve just planted out our second sowing which I sowed in pots in the greenhouse the 10^th of December.

Endive for our own consumption over the winter. It’s easier to produce than lettuce in the depth of winter though tastes slightly more bitter. This is from a late August sowing.

Apart from the vegetables there is the soft fruit; these are the blackcurrant bushes waiting to be pruned (soon) I finished pruning the raspberries yesterday.

Savoy cabbage from a June sowing. If the warm weather continues all our cabbages will need eating in the next couple of weeks, a rather daunting prospect!

Fennel sown mid June, harvested in late September and now reshooting ready for a second smaller harvest.

Elephant garlic (which did very well here last year) planted end of July and will be harvested in May

Oats sown late October which we use as a cover crop. As we harvest our crops in late summer and the beds become bare we prepare them and as soon as it rains sow them with oats as a cover crop. Then when we need the bed in spring we pull up the oats which we use for compost and are left with a beautiful friable soil.

The last of our Green Sprouting planted early June and has been harvested continually since early September.

Lettuce plants in the greenhouse sown the 10/11. I planted the first of these lettuce out yesterday under cloches and hopefully they will be ready for the first guests in April.

Strawberry plants from runners taken in November. They will be kept in the greenhouse till early March when they will be planted out. From last year’s experience these plants should start cropping in May.

Leeks for our own winter use sown mid April, with the use of different varieties we have been harvesting leeks from this sowing since early September.

Leaf beet a great hardy vegetable resisting both cold and drought. With two sowings a year we have production throughout the whole year. This crop was sown mid June.

Fertilizer and Philosophy

Looking at whole natural systems; lessons to be learnt for farming

I’ve just finished reading an excellent book by Michael Pollan entitled; The Omnivores Dilemma, the search for a perfect meal in a Fast Food World. In this book Pollan follows his next meal from land to table, tracing the origin of everything consumed and the implications for ourselves and our planet.

In one section he discusses the shortfalls of farming systems where plant nutrition is reduced to the application of simple artificial fertilizers as opposed to organic systems where soil fertility is increased using compost and manure like we do on the farm at Posada del Valle.

Turning compost in the winter and letting the soil biology work

It was the German chemist called Liebig who set agriculture on its industrial path when he broke down the quasi-mystical concept of fertility in soil into a straightforward inventory of the chemical elements plants require for growth. At a stroke, soil biology gave way to soil chemistry, and specifically to the three chemical nutrients Liebig highlighted as crucial to plant growth: Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium or to use these elements from the periodic table N-P-K. I studied horticulture at Bath University in the 70’s and we had plenty of classes on soil chemistry but never anything on soil biology, a reflection of this thinking.

The N-P-K mentality embraces a good deal more than fertilizer; it fosters the wholesale reimaging of soil (and with it agriculture) from a living system to a kind of machine. Apply inputs of NPK at one end and you get yields of crop at the other. Since treating the soil as a machine seemed to work well enough, at least in the short term, there no longer seemed to worry about such quaint things as earthworms and humus.

But as we have come to realize on the farm at Posada del Valle there is a huge biological process involved in plant nutrition a sin fin of symbiotic realtions between billions of big and small organisms that inhabit a spoonful of earth some of which can be seen when we turn the compost.

Leaves decomposing on the soil surface

Rather than reducing farming to the application of a few “essential” elements we should be imitating whole natural systems as seen in the forest and prairie. Leaves drop from the trees and decompose on the soil surface; hence we apply our compost on the soil surface and don’t dig it in. Bare soil is rarely found in nature so we avoid it by sowing a cover crop. As opposed to thinking in lineal systems like a machine which takes in resources and spews out goods we need to be thinking in loop systems. A simple example of this is crop waste which we don’t treat as waste but use it to make compost which produces more crops.

Imitating natural systems may sound more like philosophy than science but mimicking natural process precedes the understanding of them. When working in the vegetable garden certain things just “feel” right and with time many of these feelings have been proved to be true: plants grown on composted soils are more nourishing than plants grown in synthetically fertilized soils and such plants are more resistant to disease and insect pests. We have so much to learn from nature!

Healthy and tasty food grown on vegetable garden and "fertilzed" with compost.

Inntravel Discovery Day 2011

Our stand at the Inntravel Discovery Day

I got back from the UK yesterday where Sam Andres and myself had been to exhibit at the Inntravel Discovery day whilst Joe stayed in Spain and opened the hotel during the Spanish holiday week. Inntravel is the major travel agent with whom we work and specialise in independent holidays, with a bias towards people who are interested in walking, good food and authentic accommodation.

Every 3 to 4 years they organise a travel fair where all their suppliers (destinations and hotels) are invited to exhibit their products. This year they celebrated it at the Mercedes Benz World near Weybridge in Surrey on Saturday the 3rd.

It wasnt all work; the gala dinner in the evening

In total there were about 60 stands (including ourselves) and it was attended by over 1,400 people, not bad considering entrance is by invitation only. The hotels supply information about what they have to offer; the accommodation, destination, activities etc. and normally have some products for the people to sample. This year we took our own apple juice and some local cheese and home made apple jelly for people to try. We served over 400 glasses of Apple juice in less than 6 hours! Sebastian had prepared some very good posters and leaflets especially for the occasion which were much appreciated

Dancing after the dinner!

All in all I think it was a very successful event, with lots of interest being shown by people about Asturias and what we are doing. In the evening there was a gala dinner with dancing for the suppliers and all in all we had an enjoyable, if not tiring, time.