Tomato Chutney

Today was the possibly the first and last hot day in August. I was drenched in sweat after planting out karashina. Chris dug out a new bed without shirt. I found out that lettuce & komatsuna planted lately disappeared, obviously eaten by slugs, and so sprinkled slug pellets on the bed. Because Chris has been taking out slugs constantly, there are not many huge ones as seen in Joel's field, but they are harsh enough for baby plants.

I transplanted komatsuna inside and Chris sowed more lettce directly onto outside bed. These days people turn up to buy vegetables. It is nice way for both producer and customer.

We have been cropping lettuce heavily for Boulders and realized that we will be running out of supply soon. We made new beds and transplanted cos lettuce inside and outside.

Kinpira Gobo

Gobo was beautifully grown and I cooked kinpira with the gobo. This is small variety, 40 cm long but tasted good. It reminds me of Japan so much!

Edamame and sweetcorn

We enjoyed fresh edamame today. All people who try to grow edamame in this country said to me that soya beans are grown well with lots of beautiful leaves but have a few pods. It is probably due to lack of heat. As our edamame was grown inside, they have plenty pods and taste delicious! On the other hand, sweetcorn was not as sweet as we expected. Is it just the variety? or any other reason?

Veg Box

We started veg box for Japanese family in Aberystwith. We delivered various boxes with some Japanese vegetable like gobo, kabu, edamame, shiso plus basic summer veg such as tomato and courgette etc. It was so good to have their feedback saying that I cooked this, enjoyed that. Sounds like our tomatoes are very popular.

Weather or not

Over the last few days we've had monsoon style rain - sudden bursts of extreme precipitation. Today is sunnier. I'm hoping for a hot weekend.
Today we cropped for Treehouse, Family, Nisa and Boulders.
I'm getting loads of kitchen waste from Nisa - about 2 buckets per day. It's not all organic, but I'm thinking that once it's been through the compost it'll break most 'additives' down.

Wynnstay delivery

We delivered cougette, basil and shiso to Wynnstay hotel in Mach. The restaurant is well known as the best food in Wales and we are proud of supplying to them.

Soggy day

Today we hid from the drizzle in the Marquee, hoping that the rain would ease so that we could crop outside salad. But it didn't, so a merry half hour was spent by Chris outside picking a kilo for Nisa!
Beefed up [D3/4] with compost and liquid, ready in a week or so for japanese leaves.
Took out some of the flowering weeds from the Marquee sweetcorn. Needs more.
Hoed the outdoor paths.
Re-covered GHab(cd) that were dug over by japanese students on Friday.

We ate out first Sweetcorn tonight! Not as sweet as we had hoped, but great all the same.
For our main course we had roasted veg from the garden - onion, garlic, potato, small sugar pumpkin (not quite ripe), green pepper, tomato, courgette, carrot, and a little bit of oil, bacon and butter. Niiiice!!

Junka sowed Karashina, Umaina (delicious leaf), and syungiku.

Today we delivered to Nisa:
600g lettuce
150g kara/shun
600g cherry toms
125g basil

Lucky number day

Today was 8/8/8 and we had 8 japanese students from CAT who were doing a practical module of their course. They did diggy diggy of [Gab] and [Habcd] and the old potato and garlic beds [ABCdefg]. We then planted Alfalfa onto [ABCde]. Later I will also plant ABCfg with the same and do control feeding with different inputs.
The students also helped with collecting nettles for liquid compost (i didn't bother weighing this batch) which we added to the existing batch in the barrel.
They also helped crop down some of the grass along the greenhouse wall, adding this to both compost piles.
Much work was accomplished. We love enthusiastic volunteers! :o)

Tomato parade

Salad spreading

A new bed opened up from beneath covers to accomodate salad thinnings. Chris did the digging, Junka the planting.
Chris diluted the barrel of nettle tea by half. A week or so ago Misato collected 8.5kg of nettle which was added to 85 litres of water. The nettles have since liquified and we now have a batch of around 170 litres. This should then be diluted 5:1. I've also been reading that nettle fertilizer should be allowed to fully ferment (stop frothing) before being used as it produces heavy chemicals during the process. We have around 50 litres of 10:1 in the bothy which we should used first!
We have been cropping salad heavily to supply Nisa for their new coffee lounge, Boulders. This is great for business, but we really don't have enough to keep up with demand: 66 units of salad in the last week (8 kg), which may not seem much, but it's probably a record for us.


Oooh, that's a nice pumpkin!!

Boulders

Today we made our first delivery of salads to Boulders, Derek and Gwenda's new coffee lounge upstairs from Nisa in Borth. We wish them best of luck!!