Yes, it’s finally arrived and now officially Asparagus Time at Bothen Hill.  This year the harvest has been frustratingly slow due to the recent night frosts experienced which have created a huge differential between daytime and nightime tempreatures. However, finally, it is getting warmer and the spears are starting to appear in greater quantity.

We are now picking daily and our box and farm gate customers have been able to buy for the last couple of weeks. We’ve also been at Bridport Street Market on a Saturday morning, albeit with limited stock. With the main of the crop now coming on stream this is also available at Modbury Farm Shop in Burton and will soon be travelling further afield.

In the meantime we have also been busy planting, all our main crop potatoes have been in for just over a week now and we will hopefully be removing the protection from the early potatoes later this week. The salad crops are coming along well in the tunnel, harvesting lettuce this week and the salad leaves are cropping well.

Outside we are starting to see new growth on a daily basis, the bees have been busy pollinating the broad beans which are growing well. Lines of carrots, beetroot, spinach and kale are starting to appear and the peas, both traditional and sugar snap are starting to grow well.

We have been harvesting good quantities of rhubarb on a weekly basis and both the purpose and white sprouting broccoli have finally come into their own with the sunshine. As long as this continues new season veg should not be too far away.

It’s that time of year when we are getting inpatient for the first of the asparagus!

The amazing thing about this wonderful crop is that this year’s harvest is dependent on last year’s summer.  Lots of sunshine at the end of the harvesting season goes down into the crowns to ensure that they have sufficient energy to produce lots of quality spears the following year; a poor summer will result in a much lesser harvest the following year.

Last year’s summer was, as you may well recall, very sunny, added to which we have anadditional area of asparagus which was planted 4 years ago and now due to come on stream, so we are hopeful of a a bumper crop this year.

Each evening we walk around the beds looking for the emerging spears and finally, earlier this week, we managed to find just enough for the two of us to sample for dinner.  Not a lot, but enough, so we really are very hopeful that this time next week we’ll be at least offering it to our farm gate and box customers.

Planting is now well under way in our small tunnel, all the days when it was pouring with rain were spent filling plug trays and planting seeds and now the fruits of our labours are being seen!

The Summer Purple Sprouting, which is always very popular, was actually transplanted out into the field yesterday, covered with fleece for protection, and hopefully will soon be growing away.  Next week we hope to transplant both cabbages and cauliflowers, which will make room for more seed planting.

We have moved both the tomatoes and courgettes from the seed trays into larger pots, they have really benefitted from this and it won’t be long before the courgettes can be transplanted outside.

We had an excellent germination of our first sewing of french beans which have now been transplanted into the large tunnel. The second sewing are doing well and hopefully these will be transplanted next week.

Early sweet corn was planted into seed trays this week, once this germinates we will plant more so that we have a good succession when it comes to harvesting.

On the salad front, the first of the lettuce are in the tunnel and doing well, with the second sewing now transplanted outside.  The tomatoes germinated well and and are looking strong, once the present crop of salad leaves finishes in the large tunnel we will re-plant the area with tomatoes. Cucumbers were sewn at the beginning of this week, they aren’t showing yet but hopefully it won’t be long.

Outside the broad beans which were planted prior to Christmas are well in flower and subsequent plantings are doing well. We also have a good showing of peas. both conventional and sugar snap, and several lines of carrots, spinach, chard and beetroot are just starting to show.  We just need lots of warm, sunny weather to help everything along.

Last week we were fortunate to have at least two days when it didn’t rain so it was dry enough for the new potatoe bed to be prepared.  We then finally managed to get the potatoes out of the storage sacks and into the ground, just before the next deluge arrived!  However, they are now fleeced and hopefully, with the ground now around 8 degrees C, they will soon be growing. With Easter early this year it’s unlikely that they will be available then, but hopefully it won’t be too long afterwards.

With all the rain which we have had subsequently, nearly 4″ on Saturday alone, everything is extremely muddy and digging carrots and parsnips this week has been a real challenge. However, everything for this week is now safely harvested and we are looking forward to Bridport Farmer’s Market on Saturday, hopefully the weather will be kind.

The Christmas/New Year holiday period now seems a long time away, but we hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful time – we certainly did, a whole week off and we all felt this was much needed having been very busy in the run up to Christmas. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their turkeys and vegetables and if you missed out on the former don’t forget to order early this year – the book is open with repeat orders already taken.

On a gloriously sunny morning here at Bothen Hill, it is extremely muddy, following just over 30 mm of rain in the last 48 hours. Harvesting carrots has been somewhat laborious, due to the sticky mud on both them and our wellies, but they are now awaiting washing prior to going off to Modbury Farm Shop, together with parsnips, kale and other vegetables.

It has been amazingly mild over the last couple of months and as a result we are already seeing vegetables apopearing earlier than usual. Our white sprouting broccoli is in full flower already, normally we don’t start harvesting until the end of February or early March. This is certainly a lesser known vegetable but is extremely popular with our customers, sweeter than it’s purple counterpart and slightly more stalky, it’s very tasty and must be packed with lots of vitamins.

Amazingly we have also found several spears of asparagus peeping through, just enough for a quick taste in the field. Hopefully we will have some colder weather soon so it doesn’t wake up completely for a while – whilst we do enjoy asparagus, and it is extremely popular, the thought of harvesting at this time of year is a bit much!

This week we have finally managed to complete our squash harvest.  They make a wonderful, colourful display sitting in the poly tunnel where they are curing before being collected for sale at the farm gate, in our boxes and at the farmer’s market.  We have a good selection of sizes of Uchuri Kuri (red onion squash), Delicata, Butternut and the King of All Squash, Crown Prince.  All are delicious either roasted or in soup.

We have been busy planting both calabrese and cabbage seeds which  hopefully will germinate in the poly tunnel and then be planted out at the beginning of February. We have also been planting carrots outside and covered them with our own home-made cloche tunnel which, hopefully, will enable them to withstand the worst of the winter weather and enable us to have new carrots early next season.  Soon we will be able to sew more carrots in the poly tunnel having removed the french beans which eventually stopped growing last week.  Summer is really over now!

We have now completed the pumpkin harvest. Having cut them in the field several weeks ago and left them to cure they have all now turned a magnificant deep orange and have been collected together ready to go to Modbury Farm Shop at Burton where they will be sold for Halloween. We will keep a few here in case customers call by on the off chance, but they certainly make a very colourful spectical.

We have also been busy this week harvesting squash. All the Uchuri Kuri (also known as Red Onion Squash) are now curing in the tunnel ready for sale, together with the stripey Delacata. Whilst the majority of the Butternuts have been taken off the plants, there are still a few remaining which are ripening. The Crown Princes, which must be the King of All Squash, have cropped well and they are in the field awaiting transfer to the poly tunnel next week.

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With the weather being kind we have now managed to complete our potato harvest.  We grow three varieties of main crop potato, Nicola, which are a salad potato have been avaialble for some months, these are excellent with salad and also sauted.  Rudolf are our main-stay potato this year, red and excellent for mashing, producing a very white, fluffy mash.  White potatoes are Valor which are particularly good for baking, although they also roast well too.

The potatoes can be bought by the bag, either 25kg, 12.5kg or the smaller washed bags at 2.5kg which are proving to be very popular, come along to Bridport Farmer’s Market on Saturday 10th October, we’ll have plenty available.

Chip at Bridport Farmer’s Market earlier this year

Loads of tomatoes now ripening in the tunnels, we have hugh beefsteaks, standard and lots of beautiful juicy cherry tomatoes.  We’re also growing San Marzano which are plum tomatoes, great for cooking, and especially with our freshly cured bacon for breakfast.

The tunnels have also produced a good crop of French beans this year, but they are now over and we are picking outside.  Cucumbers are still producing well, hopefully they’ll keep going whilst we have sunny weather.

We have also experimented with some melons this year, too early to say whether they will succeed or not, time will tell so watch this space.

The asparagus season is well underway here at Bothen hill, where we grow 3.5 acres of the tasty spears. The season started in the last week of April when we began to harvest Gijnlim, our early variety; this has been followed be Ariane, Millennium and also Jersey Knight.

Being close to the sea gives the asparagus a regular coating of salt, which enhances the flavour. We harvest the asparagus daily – this year’s yields are as a result of last year’s hot and sunny summer.  To date, we have harvested well over half a ton and we hope that the crop will continue to yield well into June.  Once picked, the spears are hand graded, bunched, labelled and packed prior to being hydo-chilled ready for delivery.

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