What We Grow

    

We grow all year round, naturally with the season. Our polytunnels enable us to grow salad leaves and oriental greens all year, so you’ll usually find some of these in your box.  The rest of our growing rhythm goes something like this (nature willing)......

RedcurrantsRaspberryBlackcurrants
WINTER

December to March

Early purple sprouting broccoli, bulging brussel sprouts, mottled blue and deep green cabbages, romanesco, kale, black and white radishes, vibrant orange and celadon green pumpkins the colour of Chinese porcelain, celeriac still, but now red winter cooking celery, Swedes and turnips doing a ‘Little and Large’ with the skinny salsify and gnarled Jerusalem artichokes, fatter leeks now, fatter beetroot too, and no doubt some funny shaped parsnips, really dirty juicy carrots, onions, garlic and shallots, big baking potatoes, and fluffy roasters.

SPRING

March to June

Still plenty of winter staples with the full flush of sprouting broccoli, then spring greens and later sweethearted cabbage, young leaves and shoots, including wild garlic and asparagus, the sudden colour of rhubarb and radicchio and bronze tinged lettuce, maybe the first beetroot with their leaves and broad beans small enough to eat in the pod, big ribbed swiss chard and pakchoi looking like kissing cousins though not at all related, and the first pungent spring onions.

Rory on the HeapSalad Rows

Leek Seedlingsnaomi

Muck Spreading

 
BOUGHT-IN PRODUCE

We supplement our own produce, when required, by purchase from other certified organic producers.  Veg we buy in all the year round includes peppers, aubergines and tomatoes because they usually have more sun in the flavour, and then avocados and sweet potatoes because they don’t grow here, and mushrooms because they’re best left to specialists.  We use the following criteria when buying produce:

1st choice:  Scottish organic produce;

2nd choice: UK-wide organic produce;

3rd choice: Imported organic produce (with due regard to food miles and seasonality). 

We ensure that non-European produce is FairTrade where possible and do our level  best to avoid air-freighted goods.

ORGANIC FRUIT

We source our fruit from the organic wholesale market and portions usually consist of apples, pears, oranges (and other citrus fruits) and FairTrade bananas.  Soft fruit (including our own) is available during the summer months.

 

Fruit

 

 
SUMMER

July to September

Early potatoes, broad beans and sugarsnap peas, flat beans and French beans, green onions, baby beetroot and pink and golden, carrots with tops, courgettes and summer squash like flying saucers, crinkly cucumbers, our own tomatoes in different shapes and sizes, sweet summer turnip, pale green kohlrabi, buttery cabbages, broccoli heads and spears, cauliflower white and green, blue-black cavalo nero, crunchy celery and radishes, myriad lettuces and salad combos, basil coriander and parsley.

 
AUTUMN

September to December

Main crop potatoes, runner beans and French beans, maybe some late peas, corncobs crying out for butter, red onions, shallots and garlic, chunky beetroot, fat carrots, golden turnips, heavy cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli, Mr Spock romanesco, royal purple kohlrabi, curly green, frilly red and purple veined kale, sentry leeks, scented fennel and earthy parsnips, stripy marrows, a cornucopia of winter squash, knobbly celeriac and tall celery.