Apologies for last week's absence

 I had a day out in London at the Transylvanian Festival last Wednesday and someone, I'm not naming names, forgot to do the blog!

The Festival was a fundraiser for supporting sustainable rural life out there; to help the villages continue in the way they have for centuries and stop them having to go down the route to ever-more carbon dependency.

Those Transylvanian fields, full of diversity and plants which have practically disappeared elsewhere in Europe, are so precious.  For me it just emphasised what has been lost here in Britain through the industrialisation of agriculture. It is all very well to try to conserve what has yet to be lost but surely we too must employ less injurious methods of farming so as not to lose any more and to hopefully restore where we can.

In the box this week there will be different potato varieties for different collection points but they will all be good for all purposes.  As well as onions and carrots we have courgettes or cucumbers, calabrese, tomatoes, spinach and lettuce   In the fruit bag the extra fruit will be nectarines and pears.

Hopefully better late than never!

Losing a day to the Bank Holiday meant everything was running late.  The Blog is always the last job on a Wednesday and sorry, I just ran out of time.

This is excellent growing weather, good for the seedlings, good for planting out and good for plants already established.  The downside of having terrific growing conditions is that the healthy soil that we cherish is just as hospitable to the weeds as to our plants so, after the winter break, weeding is well and truly back on the list of priorities.

This week's potato is Lady Balfour - a good all purpose potato, named after one of the pioneers of the UK organic movement.  As well as onions and carrots, the box will also contain parsnips, butternut squash, calabrese (broccoli), flat beans and lettuce.