We’ve been struggling with very wet days for the last month. The croft is saturated and the burn is constantly in full spate.
It’s also bizarrely mild for this time of the year. Two years ago when we moved in around now there was snow on the hills and it was about 8°C colder. This week the day temperature has been hovering around 16°C , like a Highland summer, and my plants are all very confused.
Everything still growing
I still pop into the polycrub a few days each week to weed, water and harvest what’s ready even though this is supposed to be the down season.
This week I transplanted thirty tatsoi seedlings (Asian winter greens) into larger pots and although I’m horribly late with them it will be an interesting experiment to see if they still grow. The pak choi has done well and it’ll be good to try fresh new green things over winter.
Tatsoi seedlings everywhere
Even when it’s grey, it’s still beautiful. This is a snap I took of the cloud inversions sweeping across the Knoydart mountains this morning from the croft. I don’t think I’ll ever get blasé about this view.
The deer are here in such numbers now that it’s almost impossible to grow anything unprotected in our outdoor croft raised beds. We’ve been left with no choice but to fence off an area if we want to get any harvests next year. A job for next spring, I think.
The posts and wire have arrived already. When it’s built, the fence will be eight feet tall, which is far from great to look at, but is sadly necessary.
I can’t wait to curl up by the Woodburner in the house this winter and plan out the protected growing area. The orchard will have several varieties of heritage apple, pears, damsons and maybe we’ll try cherries too.
I’ve slowly been clearing the polycrub of pots of spent summer produce, the tomatoes, beans and squash plants all now cropped and done. The remaining green tomatoes are coming indoors to be made into chutney any day soon.
Winter crops in tubs
The winter sowings are largely in and have been growing like weeds. I planted winter lettuce and pak choi – too closely together, it seems, as I was short of tubs – expecting slow growth and plenty of time to pot them on once everything else was cleared.
But their rapid growth has taken me aback and we’ve been cropping lettuce and rocket for weeks now trying to thin it all out. They’re just about under control again.
The late August sowings of carrots have done really well. I tried growing a few tubs of Real Seeds French heritage carrots to see what would thrive. They’ve all grown well, but our favourite is a variety called d’Esigny which is a small, blunt tipped carrot with an incredible sweetness of flavour.
Yesterdays harvest with D’Esigny carrots
I shall fill tubs with this variety next year so that we have plenty, and succession-sow so that they ripen every few weeks for staggered consumption. I don’t think they’re a storing carrot, but that’s fine by us as they’re so delicious that they wouldn’t last anyway.
Carrots in tubs, dill, kale
The winter vegetables that have been planted up in the polycrub are purple sprouting broccoli, kale, winter lettuce, pak choi, tatsoi, rocket, carrots, beetroot, parsley, coriander and dill (not sure that dill will make it through winter). Let’s see what survives!
The nights are drawing in now, with a nip in the air and the fire in the caravan going on most evenings to keep the temperature comfortable. I wrap up in a blanket to watch films in the evening as the temperature drops. The electric blanket has gone back onto the bed.
The nights are properly dark again – which seems so strange after a summer of light. It’s awe-inspiring to look up and see the stars once again in clear, inky black skies. The clarity here with no light pollution is remarkable.
It must have been around 2am when I became vaguely aware of my husband getting out of bed. I was in that liminal space of being half awake, half asleep, and thought maybe it was a toilet call, so turned over and snuggled back down under the duvet.
This morning he told me that he had been worried that he hadn’t shut the bottom part of the polycrub door that evening, and was concerned that the sheep would get in and raze everything to the ground.
Realising that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep until he knew for sure, he got up, donned his wellies, and wandered stark bollock naked across the croft over to the polycrub to check.
Not my husbands actual legs
I can only hope that he didn’t scare the wildlife! I was most impressed by his dedication to our tomato crop.
If any late night star watchers were out last night and saw a naked man in wellies wandering about on the hillside, please accept our apologies for any distress caused.
Sheep happily grazing around the washing line after being thwarted from a polycrub invasion
This morning I realised that we didn’t have any fresh bread left in the caravan, so after rooting around for ingredients and inspiration for breakfast, I came up with this.
Huevos crofteros
You’ve heard of huevos rancheros? These are huevos crofteros! Crofters eggs! Tortillas, cheese, egg, spicy fresh tomato salsa. After husbands midnight wanderings I felt we both needed something sustaining.
This year has been full of experiments of the vegetable variety.
Tomatoes, red hot chillis, mild chillis, carrots, beetroot
It’s been the first year with the polycrub and growing in containers rather than beds. I started rather late in our short season, as the polycrub wasn’t built until the end of April. All of which meant that my expectations were set at a pretty low level for success.
And those expectations have largely been fulfilled ..
However, there have been a few pleasant surprises. Today I harvested my first cobs of sweetcorn. They’re small, it’s true, and there are only a few of them. But when I planted the corn seeds in May, followed by our largely sunless non-summer I really didn’t think that anything would come of them.
Sweetcorn – yay!
And yet here we are, eating sweetcorn from the croft with our supper. I’m a bit amazed that I’ve managed to produce something so seemingly exotic out of our cold, wet island.
I know that all growers are convinced that their produce is wonderful, but I’m a critical grower, honestly. Our tomatoes have been prolific but disappointing in taste this year and there are some plants, lovingly tended, that have not thrived or produced a harvest worthy of a repeat next year. However, this corn was absolutely delicious, an hour from plant to plate. Sweet and very succulent.
I stand in awe of the tolerance that some plants have for less than ideal environments. It gives me great hope for next years food production which will be in deep beds, fertilised with our own seaweed and croft compost.
A world apart in terms of taste!
Fifty seven degrees north. Who would have guessed!
Due to the great sheep invasion I’ve decided that until we can get our croft fences repaired or replaced, any winter vegetable growing will have to just be in the polycrub.
More sheep lurking around the croft
Autumn is definitely in the air, and I’ve been slowly clearing the pots of spent pea tendrils and bean shoots, freeing up space for successional sowings of winter vegetables and herbs.
The tunnel is still pretty full of plants:- tomatoes slowly ripening, beetroot, cucumbers, sweetcorn, carrots, herbs and squash, but now is the time to start the next round of crops if we want to continue eating through the colder months.
Beetroot
I’ve been in there over the last few weeks sowing seeds. The great thing is that they germinate quickly at this time of the year – which is a good thing, as we need them to get established enough to survive the winter in an unheated grow space. I’m trying my best not to have to subsist on neeps and tatties this year.
Leetle vegetable seedlings
So far I’ve got pak choi, winter lettuce, black spanish radishes (exotic, I know – I don’t know what came over me) purple sprouting broccoli, spinach, rocket, more dill and coriander and a few more tubs of carrots on the go. They’re looking lush with promise at this stage, although I’ve been here before..
Carrot sowings
I’ve still got winter cabbage and kale to sow. We can’t overwinter without salty kale crisps and rumbledethumps (a Scottish dish of mashed potatoes, cabbage, onion and cheese, like colcannon) once the weather turns.
More dill
The wormery that we installed a few months ago is now coming into its own, and we’ve been watering the polycrub pots with worm juice every week. It seems to be doing the plants the world of good.
It looks like gravy, which I guess in a way it is. I try not to feel sorry for the worms that inevitably fall into the collection tray full of liquid and drown. It’s a hard enough life being a worm. Husband has an idea to use insect mesh to save them, which we will certainly try in the interests of worm colony morale.
I love the cyclic nature of growing: garden clippings and waste go into the compost or the worm bins, which get added back to the soil to support the next generation of plant growth.
This continual replenishment of nutrients and micro-organisms is essential in helping to build healthy soil, which is truly the heart of everything. I’ll just have to live happily with the scurrying, burrowing beetle and other insect life that it supports, and which I know is a good thing.
Someone once told me that if nothing was eating your plants, you weren’t part of the eco system. I’m pleased to report that we well and truly are.
We’ve not had much in the way of a summer yet despite us being at the end of July, but the croft and the polycrub continue to feed us.
We dug out the rest of the onions yesterday. These are a variety called Keravel Pink, and they’ve produced what I think is quite a respectable harvest.
I chose these as they were the closest I could find to the Roscoff onions that I used to love when I lived in France. They’re an onion with a slightly blush colour, and sweet, firm flesh. They’re now hung up to dry, ready for use.
Husband also dug the rest of the potatoes as we were starting to detect slug – and believe it or not, deer damage. We’ve had a few meals already from them. It’s a smaller crop than last year, probably caused by the cold, wet weather and they could have done with a bit longer in the ground, but they’re a reasonable size. To be honest, we like ‘em small and sweet.
I planted Edzell Blue and Casablanca varieties from Scottish seed potatoes and Red Rooster from a bag of sprouted supermarket potatoes. The supermarket ones outperformed the specialist ones by a reasonable margin for a second year!
The first of the carrots are ready now, and I’m going to sow more. They’re sweet and very flavoursome.
The sweetcorn experiment is progressing! We have flowers and silks on a few of the plants, so I’ve been hand pollinating with the hope that we manage to get a few cobs at least.
All in all, not bad for a low-effort croft nurtured using organic principles and no-dig beds, in this weather and whilst not at my best due to illness. No pesticides, no inorganic fertilisers, no chemicals. I love that we can pick produce straight from the plant. The soil is fertile and giving, and we will continue to develop the beds next year with windbreaks and deer protection.
It seems strange but I can already detect the first wisps of autumn drifting in from the edges. The leaves on the ancient horse chestnut at the end of the lane are starting to turn russet. The seed heads on the long croft grasses are ripe and heavy. The season feels about to turn.
July is underway and with it comes the first of the proper harvests from the croft.
The polycrub really has been a game changer and we’ve managed to grow cucumbers and lettuce enough for all of our salads and more to spare for neighbours and friends. This in combination with the produce from the raised beds has meant a wide variety of foods can be grown throughout an extended season.
Lettuce and young onions
The most successful lettuce has been a butterhead, which we’ve been cropping as a cut and come again lettuce. We’re also growing romaine. All the mizunas and rocket grew well initially, but then bolted within weeks and became straggly. I don’t like eating the mustards and mizuna because of the spiky texture of their leaves so I won’t bother with these next year, and will just plant more lettuce.
Butterhead lettuce
The onions were supposed to be red onion varieties, but aren’t more than vaguely pink. They sent up flower shoots so most of them have been lifted before they soften.
They’re small, but sweet. We’re using them in salads and cooking now and I have them drying in bunches ready for use later in the season.
Drying onions
The red kuri squash has a few young fruits on it, which I’m very excited about. Early days, but I’m hopeful that we’ll have a few to harvest in late summer. The French squash hasn’t shown any sign of fruiting yet.
Baby squash hiding behind a tomato leaf
The garlic was a bit of a disappointment. Sown last October I had high hopes for bigger heads this year, but they’re still small. I’ll use them in stews and trays of roasted vegetables, so despite their lack of size they won’t be wasted.
Wimpy garlic
The potatoes are also much slower than last year. We’ve just harvested some Edzell Blue and Casablanca varieties. Great taste, but not hugely prolific. We’ll hold off for a while for the main crop variety.
Edzell Blue potatoes
The kale is growing well after the deer ate all of my perennial kales from the beds last winter. I grew more Uncle Bert’s kale and red Russian kale from seed and it’s coming up nicely. I’ve also sown purple sprouting broccoli into the beds recently, so between them that should give us a reasonable winter crop.
The carrots were grown in large seed lick tubs this year as an experiment. Three varieties, all French heritage types, growing well, albeit slowly. The first of these should be ready in a few weeks time.
Carrots
The cucumbers had a very faltering start due to the cold temperatures of late spring. A number rotted and wilted beyond salvation, but the three plants that did survive are fruiting well and have produced about six cucumbers ready for eating so far. There’s no trace of bitterness to their taste either, which is great.
Baby cucumber
The tomatoes are starting to set fruit, again later than most due to our cold, late start. It will be interesting to see whether we can get them to ripen in time. The big Russian bush varieties are pruned and tall with not much evidence of fruit yet. The dwarf bushy varieties, which don’t get pruned, are happily fruiting away with no fuss.
Dwarf tomato plants doing their thing
The courgettes – I only planted two plants so that we weren’t overrun if they grew – have started fruiting, although the fruit is yellow rather than green, which is a total surprise. We’ve already had a handful of courgettes from them, and looking at the flowers there will be many more to come.
The beans have struggled. The borlotti beans are doing the best out of all the varieties and are starting to flower now, so I’m hopeful for a few fresh beans from them.
The corn is about four feet heigh although no sign of flowers or fruits yet.
The herbs have gone mad – the tubs of parsley and coriander have gone crazy and we’ve been eating them for months, the dill the same and I’ve left some to go to seed for collection. The chives, lemon balm, rosemary, lemon verbena and mint are all growing well.
All in all, I’m happy with our first months of growing with the polycrub so far. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been here since mid April. I’ve learned a lot, and when we set up proper grow beds in there next year I’ll feel confident about what to plant out.
Now to start sowing the winter seeds! The year is turning already.
We have had an incredibly wet couple of months recently, and as I look ahead at the weather forecast for the next week, I see no respite. It really doesn’t feel like summer.
No sun, just back-to-back clouds and rain for the week to come. I’m clutching my mug of coffee and peering out through the rain-smeared caravan windows as I write.
Baby cucumbers at last
Luckily the polycrub remains largely unaffected by the rain. Everything seems to be growing nicely in there, although the lack of warmth and sunshine means that my tomatoes and courgettes are being very slow to set fruit. There are lots of flowers, but only a few tiny fruits so far, despite feeding and shaking to help pollination. More patience is needed as well as more sunshine!
Baby tomatoes
We have youngest stepson staying with us at the moment. I say youngest, he’s 21 😊. Despite being a child of the city, a very definite metro-being, he’s been quite taken by the rituals of watering, pruning, planting and harvesting in the polycrub and has been helping me with this.
Which is a really good thing as it’s a busy time of the year in there and I’m still pretty limited in what I can do since the operation, with no lifting or standing for too long.
Lettuce
He pricked out baby beetroot into pots yesterday and I showed him how to take excess foliage off the tomato plants to redirect energy into the setting fruits. He’s also been building plant stakes to support the trailing plants.
Sitting in there with his music on enjoying the now rather jungle-like environment of climbing greenery, it’s been nice to see him without his nose in his phone or laptop for a bit enjoying the outdoors. Well indoors really, I guess. A polycrub is a sort of halfway house, isn’t it…😊
Who knows, maybe we have another generation of growers in the making…
When it comes to plumbing, electrics and heating in the home it may all be in Mandarin for the level of understanding I have. Husband makes it sound very logical and simple, and clearly finds it amusing that I either panic or glaze over when he tries to explain how electrical things work.
Yesterday we had the plumbers in to install the Air Source Heat Pump system for the house. This is a core element in heating the house as economically as possible, something that is becoming increasingly essential.
We now have a plant room with hot water tank, expansion vessels, underfloor heating pipes and outside, mounted on a concrete slab, the ASHP unit.
To me the assemblage in the plant room looks like something out of a gothic horror novel, all those pipes and valves and control panels. A local friend described it as looking like “a steam train mated with a brass band” which made me laugh out loud.
The electrician needs to come next week to complete the installation before we can crank it up and start testing it.
But it’s progress! Once it’s in and working we can lay the rest of the flooring, which will be another major milestone.
Whilst the install operation was underway I hid in the Polycrub.
There’s always something happening in there at this point in the growing year and the tomatoes and squash are now so large that I can hide amongst them quite effectively.
Every morning when I open up the tunnel to water the plants I pick as I go, a sort of micro-harvest. A few ripe strawberries, a handful of peas, a few bunches of coriander, dill , parsley, some lettuce. It doesn’t seem like much, but soon it will mean that we won’t have to buy those things.
Once the freezer and dehydrator are up and running, we’ll be able to store surpluses. At the moment we share any excess with our friends and neighbours.
It’s like receiving a gift every day.
It’s so satisfying to feel that you’ve grown this yourself, and that it will be on the table by supper time. Small steps towards self sufficiency.
It’s amazing how quickly things grow at this time of the year. In the few weeks since I last posted about plant progress, the croft beds have filled up and are now bursting with foliage from the maturing potatoes, onions, garlic and kale.
Raised beds with sorrel in centre
The red veined sorrel planted last year was the only thing that the deer didn’t eat over winter, and in the last four weeks it’s shot up and is throwing out flower stems. We’ll keep the seed and cut it right back soon.
Mint going crazy Polycrub filling up
The polycrub plants are growing even faster. The tomatoes have flowers on them and the squashes, courgettes, beans and sweetcorn have all grown hugely.
Borlotti beans
We’re already cropping strawberries from the three tubs of strawberry plants that we have. It’s just a small bowl each day, but they’re sweet and delicious.
Breakfast bowl of strawberry pickings
We have plans next year to increase strawberry production and as the plants are already sending out runners we should be able to propagate many more plants before next spring. We’ll install a couple of runs of drain piping to hold them above the raised beds.
StrawberriesHerbage (mammoth dill)
The days are long now. Sunrise is at about 4.30 am and sunset around 10.30pm, with the plants responding to the long days with rapid growth. The ravens set up a cacophony of noise at dawn to herald the start of day (thanks lads) and one of us potters over to open the polycrub some hours later once coffee has kicked in.
More herbage (parsley)
Soon we will start harvesting. We’re already cropping seed-grown parsley, coriander, basil and dill, as well as lettuce, but the potatoes and garlic won’t be long now. Then courgettes, spring onions, peas and beans. I’m already sowing purple sprouting broccoli, kale and pak choi to succession plant in the spaces that they will leave, and tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and corn won’t be far behind.
The polycrub is my happy place. It’s warm and sheltered and smells faintly of greenage and soil and the spiciness of growing leaves.
Ravencroft Skye 