Croeso to the most recent edition of our Hooma Hu monthly newsletter! We hope we can fill you in with a little of what’s been happening here in the Hooma Hu field as well as updating you with upcoming crops, news and events. We hope you enjoy the read!
A new growing season is well underway here at Hooma Hu and after a bit of a lull we thought we would start up our newsletters for the year to keep you informed of what’s been going on behind the scenes. The main news is of our Polytunnel. As many of you will know we had a very rough start to the year in our field with our big 30 Meter polytunnel being totally destroyed by storm Isha back in January. The tunnel had literally just gone up after about a year of planning and construction to be ripped to pieces just days after the covering went on. We have some fantastic news however as we have just secured a brand new polytunnel of the same size to be delivered at the beginning of May! This is down to all of you kind and very generous folk who helped us out, not just with donations but also with time as well. We cannot thank you enough and are over whelmed and amazed with the support of the people around us. The new Polytunnel is from 5 star tunnels based in Llandysul and it will be a very strong structure with more braces than the last tunnel to protect it from any similar weather conditions. We will be constructing it our selves with a bit of help through out the summer months so we hope for it to be ready by August for some winter crops to go in to. An incredible turn around from the disaster back in January, it means the continuation of more local veg being produced here at Hooma Hu.
In other news we have been busily sowing seeds and preparing all the vegetable beds here in our field over the last few weeks. The season is really ramping up now with some seedlings ready for planting out, it will only get busier and busier as we head in to May with the warmth and light that comes with the longer months not only accelerates the vegetable crops but also speeds up all the weeds around them! Already sown are Radish, Lettuce. Broad Beans, Celery, Chillies, Leeks, Cabbage, Kale, Basil, Spinach, Sprouts, Courgettes, Squash, Sweetcorn, Carrots and Tomatoes with still more to go in over the next few weeks. We have had a very up and down journey with our Tomatoe seedlings this year, the first sowing in January fell victim to a fungal infection known as Septoria Leaf spot. It first appears as small black dots on the leaves, the dots then enlarge over time eventually killing the leaves and spreading throughout the plant. It also sends out spores so it can spread and before we knew it it had totally wiped out our January sowings. By the time we had ordered more Tomatoe seedlings, disinfected the propagation area and re sowed it was the beginning of March! Well behind! The tomatoes were re sown, germinated and one variety “Sakura” started to develop the black spots again!! This time we acted quickly and destroyed all of the Sakura plants before it could spread to the other tomatoes seedlings, so far they are looking good, although small for this time of year. Hopefully once they get planted out and get their roots down in to some good fertile soil they will catch up a bit.
As for harvesting at the moment we have reached a time of year called the “hungry gap”. This is when most of the vegetables from last growing season have been used up or gone to seed but the new plants of this season are not yet ready. We here at Hooma Hu dug the last of our Carrots from the soil a few weeks ago. We also cropped the last of our Kale and Salad Bags before they went up to seed last week. We still have a couple of Months to go before the bulk of the new plants are ready to start picking but we do have a few things to see us through. Spinach and Rainbow Chard should continue cropping as well as some Rosa Radish being ready soon. Spring Onions are always a good traditional hungry gap crop and our lettuces are in the ground and should only be a few weeks away.
Next year we should be harvesting our newly planted Rhubarb that we put in the ground this spring so that will be another hungry gap filler. We chose the variety “Strawberry Surprise” as it has been highly recommended and sounds delicious. It was very satisfying planting out the crowns knowing that they can keep producing good Rhubarb for up to 20 years! We have also been busy planting out rows of Gooseberry and Blackcurrant bushes in our field, the varieties we choose are Red Hinnonmaki and Yellow Hinnonmaki, we really can’t wait to see these grow and provide beautiful berries for your boxes.
Moving in to May will see everything going in to the ground; main crop Carrots, Parsnips, Beetroots. I would say May is perhaps the busiest month of the year for us here. I wonder if we will see another May drought like we did last year, it was a real struggle to get anything to germinate in those conditions! Only time will tell!
Thanks for reading our newsletter, we hope you enjoyed it and found it informative. We will be very soon starting up our weekly volunteer days again so will keep you updated on these. They will be on a Tuesday and will involve planting out crops, weeding and getting stuck in with what ever needs doing. We will provide drinks and snacks and be happy to chat and answer any questions you have about veg growing too. If you are interested In coming down when these start up please get in touch and we will keep you informed.
Cariad Mawr, Rita, Will and Luna
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