Tomatoes Thriving & Organic Principles

Hello Everyone,

A huge thank you to you lovely people who have messaged to say how much you are enjoying following and seeing Bob, our ‘Head Gardener’ to you, husband to me. As you must already realise, I am extremely proud of him. When I first met him he was probably one of the best dressed men in the town, now not necessarily so…muddy wellies, crumpled trousers and hands not so soft. But his boots are always polished! What has not changed is the enthusiasm for completing the task in hand. His task now is the ‘Freyja Project’. This includes planning the reset of our existing small farm, rejuvenating an historic walled garden, creating a meadow and gardens while ensuring all planning measures are met to begin building a restaurant with accommodation. No mean task!

You have been able to follow the progress watching on social media and also from the weekly Journal. Some have been reading the Journal on the Hexhamshire Organics website. Over the next two weeks the Hexhamshire Organics website will be no more…no tears! You will still be able to read the Journal and discover more by subscribing to the Freyja Restaurant website. It is really easy to do this…just press the button below. You may also be interested in subscribing to the YouTube Channel. Then you can watch and read the trials and tribulations of all the Freyja Project adventures.

The Farm

The reset continues and the farm is looking brilliant, especially as Mother Nature is providing more daylight time. As I said last week, the wood chip paths really do make all the difference with the finishing touches. Everything just takes time. It seemed to take quite some time on Monday and Tuesday as, once again, snow made jobs seem to take longer and were much harder. The gales and rain has not helped either but the temperature is up by ten degrees.

The greenhouses are warm though, as the gas fires are on and the power supply available for the propagators. This is fab news as seeding has taken over Lucy’s days. As you can see from above it just took seven days for the tomatoes to germinate. We have nineteen varieties of tomatoes this year…cherry, beef, red, yellow, orange, stripy, chocolate, round, oval, green, salad…all shapes, colours and sizes to provide our Chef Alex with the greatest choice of flavour and taste. 

Tomatoes have always been our best seller, the most prolific harvest yet the most time consuming crop. We take many hours to cultivate this vegetable (or is it a fruit?). From the little pots you can see in the above picture, each seedling will be transplanted into its own little pot and then probably potted on once more before planting out into the polytunnels. Then each plant will be secured to its own string which trains the plant to grow upwards. The stress of the string increases the demand on the plant to produce more flowers. More flowers equals more tomatoes. Each plant will be fed with Organic Seaweed on what we call ‘Feeding Friday’. They are watered little-but-often…not loads of water as, being from a Mediterranean climate, they do not enjoy being drowned. Each plant needs to have side shoots removed regularly to keep the plant tidy but more importantly to concentrate the growth of the fruit and not the leaf. So, next time you buy your tomatoes, think about how much work goes into helping these little, sometimes big

The Walled Garden

The winter months are the perfect time for planting out bushes and trees which have no leaves on them at this time. They are dormant and just raring to go when the days get longer and warmer. We are now having our summer fruiting bushes delivered and ready to be planted out into the soft fruit area of the Walled Garden. So far we have had the Jostaberry bushes and an assorted variety of Blueberry bushes delivered, as you can see above. The variety of Blueberries are: Blueberry, Bluecrop, Sunshine Blue and Pink Lemonade. The Pink Lemonade I am especially excited about…yes they are pink and yes they are supposed to have a citrus flavour. 

Work has begun for the planting out of these…only the planning of the task as we are waiting until all the soft fruit bushes arrive…Red Gooseberries, Raspberries, all Currants and more.

We are certified by the Soil Association and follow their guidelines. However, sometimes we are unable to buy-in certain items which are not organic. We then apply to the Soil Association for a ‘Derogation’, which means that we have tried to go the organic route but nothing was available. We would then use the ‘Organic Principles’ allowing the produce to become ‘Organic’. Or, as for our soft fruit bushes, we buy ‘bare root stock’, which simply means the plants have no soil on the roots, they are bare so bringing in unwanted chemicals. Then the fruit is ‘Converted’ to being ‘Organic’ in a few years, as long as they are grown using ‘Organic Principles’. 

This is less complicated than it sounds, but once again, time consuming. 

So, progress is being made across both farm and garden, but, like a bit of ‘red-tape’, it is all taking a bit of time. Time is precious so enjoy it.

Till next week,

Ann