News from the Market Garden Oct 2015

Welcome to new readers and box customers. Your regular news from the market garden – what’s coming up in your veg box this month, industry news, recipes and more. We love to feature customer recipes or your foodie news/blog – your own  or interesting ones you’ve found. Send us your links!

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Celeriac, squash, leeks, fennel, beetroot giving the boxes an autumnal feel, we’ve got the last of the peppers from the polytunnels coming out in the next 2 weeks. We’re bringing in carrots from the Borders and trialling potatoes direct from grower Romeo at Peepout Organics in Pembroke (we’re much better off leaving these big crops to farmers with big machines!). Romeo is also supplying some lettuce to enable us to get the right mix in our salad bags – newly out  again – as our current leaves are quite spicy. The brassica’s are looking promising – big round savoy cabbages hearting up,  and sprouts getting fat for Christmas. Elsewhere we’ve got chard, kale, celery and nice herbs –  flat leaf parsley, coriander and Welsh onions (like chives).

You can now fully customise your order with a My Choice box (min £11 value for home delivery). Don’t forget to revisit your account to update substitutions and exclusions. Changes to your order – pausing, substitutions, extras can  be made through our ordering system  Bucky Box –  by the Friday before your box is due.   Log into your Bucky Box account and take a look. To make changes click on the  ‘my order’ button. If you want to order a veg box visit our webstore.

Its been a very difficult summer for us as our head grower Keir left  to set up his own business at the end of June. Replacing him proved challenging – not many horticultural growers out there, and the remaining market garden staff have been under a good deal of pressure trying to keep things going – at the most demanding time of year. We’ve had some great  temporary staff – Ceri and Jane – and our previous grower Sophie came back to do some mentoring.  Assistant Grower Tom has done a fantastic job stepping up to the plate to keep things going, learnt  how to drive the tractor and used it cultivate the field. We’ve now struck lucky and found a new grower Scott who has been market gardening for many years in the Brighton area to start at the end of October. As we are also out of our grant funded period Scott will also be setting to to see that Riverside Market Garden can stand on its own two feet financially.

Polytunnels cleared now of tomatoes and cucumbers and beds readied for salad plugs to be planted out  end October.  We’ll have a plentiful supply of salad bags in the New Year to keep some tasty greenery in the boxes during the winter. We’ve got some green manure down on the empty sections of the field and the warm weather has got that off to a good start. The squash were harvested last week – having made the most of the indian summer. After a rest period they’ll be in the boxes in time for Halloween  – definitely not for making lanterns with though!!!

We’ve been pleased to get more closely connected to the village of St Hilary – where we are based in the Vale of Glamorgan – and are now going to open up for gate sales to passers by. We regularly attend Cowbridge Farmers Market  – first and third Saturdays in the month, and the lovelyCowbridge Country (ex WI) Market  first and third Friday morning’s in the month. We’ve been unable to regularly attend Riverside Market because of staffing difficulties.

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We are seeking to expand our Board of Directors. If you would like to be more closely involved in the life of Riverside Market Garden please get in touch.