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This time last year I was looking across my seabuckthorn with dismay.
One of the issues with the crop is that the longer it takes to establish, the greater your passion grows for it to succeed. So when disease strikes – it becomes personal. In effect it hit about 400 plants within the main area of 3000.

A visit from an agronomist from Agrovista resulted in a stinging email that if I did not get on top of the weed issue then the project would fail.

So this year has been a concentrated focus to reverse the slide into failure and it is paying off.

Weed control is not total across the whole site. Each plant has a one metre strip cut alongside it on both sides. The labouriously the grass, and other unwanted water and nutrient stealers are mown with a 22″ hand mower.
Gradually more and more plants are being surrounded by a 30kg ring of compost, so the hand mowing problem becomes less and less.
Go and buy a machine I can hear you thinking.

That is fine but you also have to remember that as an unknown UK crop that still has not produced a commercial harvest, I have to chose where our limited funds are to be spent.
This year it is on the compost tea brewer; compost ( around 150 tons); and I now have help with the mowing/weeding. The budget then will spread to berry analysis; going to the Euroworks conference in Finland; purchasing more plants and installing a serviced office on the site.

The compost around the plants has made a huge difference. As I do not water my plants it is helping to stop the ground baking dry.

The compost tea programme is now covering all plants in a three week cycle. In terms of disease control the difference between this year and last is amazing. There are still some plants which have yellowed and these stick out as sick and lonely individuals.
Whether they survive we will have to wait and see.

One observation I should mention regards the berries on Klaudia. In 2011 when the german plants first started to have berries they appeared as lots of little sacks that did not fill and most shed off the plants. With klaudia 80% are small orange berries that similar to the germans in 2011, they just are not filling. There are a few full berries and these are yellow.

The variety with the most berries is Altaiskaya. These are in a pale green phase and have not changed colour over this month.
I tried to measure one with a refractometer to test the Total Soluable Solids. Unfortunately the instruement gauge only goes up to 10 and the reading went over that – which is good, but I am now waiting for a refractometer with a 0-20 gauge.

June has been dry as a month and it looks like it is going to continue. It is a test on the plants that have been planted this year, but the majority will survive. Providing no water means that their roots have to go deeper – the root to survival.

I have been writing this blog over the last week but today kicked in a new problem that I possibly could/should have foreseen but didn’t.
I am in the process of mowing the site and as I went up and down the rows I noticed that there seemed to be fewer berries than there were.
In short I am fairly certain that the flock of rooks that have been around the site over the past month having now a taste for seabuckthorn.
Mother Nature at work – but before they are ripe as well.

I will have a good look tomorrow but my plans for sending berries away for analysis now looks like being put off for a year. I will have the german berries to test, but it was the Siberian varieties that are the one’s of real interest.
I will put some fleece around the plants that still have some on, but this is shutting the stable door after the birds have flown away with a belly full of my berries.

One thing about seabuckthorn there never is a shortage of issues to solve.
On the bright side though the plants look healthy and they are still young and growing. But it would have been good to taste some UK Siberian seabuckthorn.

Monday’s often are unpredictable.

With the compost tea brewer bubbling away there is now a new focus. If the intention is to give all plants a dose every three weeks I need to feed 1660 plants per week. I am getting between 650 and 800 plants per brew so theoretically that means two brews a week.
It is said that one should spray before the sun gets too high in the sky as UV light is not good for the micro-organisms that are in the Compost tea (CT). To follow this I tend to spray about 400 plants by 9am.
The next issue is whether or not to include some seaweed in the mix.
With the brewer now working well, I am looking to a plan for next year.
As the variety Klaudia normally starts to show some buds breaking in early January, this will trigger the first spray. As they emerge the cycle will be three weekly with just CT, then adding seaweed in March when all varieties are in full leaf.
From then I will give all plants seaweed with every six weeks – or with the second CT spray.

I am going to buy a powered sprayer to speed up the process of the CT sprays, but there is an advantage of a backpack spray to give a good look around every plant. So the seaweed sprays will be more manual.
One final comment about CT spraying – the process of making compost tea involves blowing air through compost and circulating it through a tub of water. Not unsurprisingly particles of compost are circulating in the CT mix which can block a sprayer with annoying regularity. I found the simple solution was to completely remove the inline filter in the handle of the sprayer lance. This works quite well if you spray up onto the underside of the leaf. It still has a tendency to block occasionally.
The second modification came when I was cleaning out the nozzle and dropped the rubber washer that holds the cone nozzle in place. I could not find it , but the sprayer not only worked well without leaking, but also without any further blockages.
It does help though to spray up from the bottom onto the under leaf and this keeps the CT mix away from direct sunlight.

Changing the subject, I have noticed this week a few caterpillars creeping back into the plants. very few, but it is one to go in the diary that there is a second flush of possible predators appearing in week 2 June.

The other observation yesterday was odd bushes with flattened branches. The seabuckthorn plants are still not very sturdy, so for any bird to perch on the top is asking for trouble.
The way the branches have been flattened suggests something like a pigeon or dove. This could be the first interest that birds are having to the berries.

I can live with a hare in the plantation because he largely keeps himself to himself. The odd muntjac deer even comes and goes, but birds taking the berries is a concern.

The berries are ripening now. Klaudia, Elizaveta, Inya, Chuiskaya, all have green berries turning yellow, with the odd one now yellow with a red tinge to the end. Altaiskaya is uniformly green. Sudarushka has not produced much fruit yet.
Strangely Augustina, which is possibly an early variety is also mainly with green berry.
I started thinking that I would log these colours against a paint colour chart, but this is not a universal system, so instead I will log the berry colour against a pH chart.

I have had news from the agricultural engineer that I have been in discussion with regarding developing a hand harvesting tool. We are meeting at the farm in the first week of July. Cracking a simple system with minimum damage to berries and high output is an essential to commercial seabuckthorn farming. The second point to this will be also developing a system to clean the berries and remove the leaf that is striped off in the harvesting process.
This is a major challenge for this year.

The second will be the analysis of the resultant berries.

It promises to be a milestone year.

I thought I was making progress. This week I fired up the compost tea brewer. A Martin Lishman 100 lt brewer – 72 hours of allowing the compost mix to mature; into the pot with 100 lt of water and catalyst – then 24 hours of aeration. The result a good frothy, pale tea coloured mixture to create a healthy soil food web – or in other words providing the soil with a boost of micro-organisms that come from the compost and are multiplied by the aerated brewing process and help provide the correct mix of beneficial micro-organisms in my soil.

It forms part of my soil/plant management strategy of creating a healthy plant from a healthy soil.

One of the more crucial parts of this strategy however is to also apply compost to the soil in order to improve the organic matter in the soil; provide a source of the micro organisms that are part of the soil improvement plan – as well as being a weed mulch.
This is fine and I started the season by applying green waste compost. My problem has been that the compost that is coming is not completely processed. In short it heats when it arrives to such an extent that a layer of it turns to ash.
The consultant that I am using for advice in this whole process is Simon Parfey – who was with Laverstock farm.
It was not happy words that came from him this afternoon when I heard that I should level out all the compost that I have been placing around my plants and dispose of the remainder of the load that last came in. In effect it is unusable.
It has helped to reduce the weeds around the plants, but the fact that it has not fully completed its composting cycle means the heating process is destroying the nutrients I need for the soil improvement.
Added to that the heating process is not a happy place for micro-organisms to multiply.
So back to the drawing board. Find a new source of compost. More importantly I need to buy in more help and get the compost to all plants as soon as possible.

So that is issue one.

Issue two is that one variety ( KLaudia) has berries that are already sweet. I would not call the berries ripe because officially the berries should not be ripe until August. But I have to consider that these plants have had a strange winter with little or no dormancy. The downside is that the berries are not mature, being small and needing to fill out. The colour is yellow. It may well be that this is just part of the gradual ripening process.
So my plan is to freeze some of the berries of each variety every week from now through to the beginning of September. This will provide a stock of berries that can be analysed at leisure over the autumn to see how the nutrients within the berries are changing.

One of the issues about this year is finding that whereas last year I had 3500 plants to manage – the extra 1500 this year is making managing the site really quite a challenge. I would almost say to the extent that one man cannot keep a clean, tidy, well weeded, fed and managed site of more than 3500 plants.

This is without additional machinery. I need to have a tractor an loader; a compost dispenser with quick pick-up fittings; a ride on mower/ tractor mower; strimmer; tractor mounted sprayer and a lighter weight sprayer for use in the winter/spring. With these implements the additional plants would be easy. That will make the difference of staying on top of the list of work that needs to be done.

So I need to start 2015 with this equipment in order to start applying compost tea/seaweed in January as the first plants start to break from dormancy. By regular applications through the spring and into the summer, I am hoping that the disease that is creeping into the site will be kept under control.

I expect that it will take three years of compost applications to build up a healthy soil profile and until then i will be fighting a disease battle. The current applications of seaweed and tea are holding the majority of plants in good health, but the more vigourous varieties – Etna and Elizaveta really need watching and tend to be susceptible to problems. The male Gnom also has issues. But it is something that seems to be manageable and given improving soil health – seabuckthorn will be a viable crop.

There are times when one looks back and wonders whether I should have set up the seabuckthorn project differently.
My clay soil moves from waterlogging in winter to baking rock hard in summer. This is not a friendly environment for seabuckthorn. But then, neither is high altitude; nor cold desert – it is a hardy and adaptable plant.
The natural response to living in harsh conditions is survival of the fittest.

So when I walk my seabuckthorn rows, there are areas where some plants have not established or are taking a long time to establish.
The field I am using used to be a grazing field for our dairy herd. Then in 1996, it was used as the headquarters site for the scout jamboree that came to the farm every four years. Inbetween the jamborees it reverted to arable.
I can remember when I first started to plant the seabuckthorn, certain areas in the field were thick with wild oats. As we planted, the soil was variable across the field with patches maybe of 10 metres square of heavy clay that would blend into more manageable heavy but more manageable land. So it is no wonder that in places plants have taken more time to establish. But establishment is not the issue – unfriendly soil conditions are creating stress, both in the form of nutrient/moisture availability and the ability for roots to spread.

As I have been cutting back the grass and other growth around each seabuckthorn plants it is clear that only Elizaveta seems to have maintained surface roots. Other varieties seems to have used the deep cracking that occurs in this soil to develop root structure. Interestingly it is also Elizaveta that suffers worst from the disease dieback that I have learnt to dread.

So I should have paid more attention to the seabuckthorn management manuals and ploughed the ground the year before planting and applied a good amount of organic matter. It is easy to say, but this project has grown from one year to the next. The budget was tight and expectations of success were 50/50. In hindsight I should have been more confident. But the results now are showing success. It is possible to grow seabuckthorn in heavy soil, but it needs soil management and regular foliar feeding to help the plants through periods of stress.

Elizaveta in particular will get some extra attention and a light foliar feed every two weeks. This will and is creating lush growth, but while these plants are young and still growing I do not see this as a problem.
I will be applying compost to each row over the next three years to lighten the soil, and hopefully this will create a more balanced soil – reduce stress and there will be less need to treat the plants with as much TLC.

The other consideration will be in the quality of the fruit and the concentration of nutrients within them. It is difficult to know what to expect. My plants are under stress – will that be good or not for nutrient quality – only time will tell.

Quality and standards are a topic that will feature at the Euroworks conference (October 14-16th),Naantali in Finland this year.
It is a subject that is important but it has to be relevant. As a grower it is relevant as I must grow a fruit that will provide a viable ingredient that provides consumer benefit. It is a subject that I want to debate at the Devereux farm Open Day. I need to fix a date – but that has to relate to when a good selection of varieties are ripe. As this is the first time that the plants have produced berries, there would be some variation in the accepted normal period.
The classic Chuiskaya ripens in the second half of August; Inya, the first 10 days of September; Altaiskaya late August to early September. I need to have confirmation and advice from Lisavenko first but I think it will be late August/ first week of September.
So at this stage the Open Day will be focused on Quality and the market for seabuckthorn – not just UK produced, but European as well. I would hope to attract potential growers, researchers, processors and buyers. But it is early days yet.

This might be becoming monotonous but the same field job is taking priority – clear all weeds one metre square around each plant/spike with fork/apply 30kg compost. It should be a lesson to anyone growing seabuckthorn – never allow grass etc to take over. The alternative of have to clear them is time consuming.

I could have grown them under plastic but this would not have allowed once/twice a year application of compost which I need in order to lighten my clay soil.

Even though we had rain a week ago, the ground is solid again and scraping the turf off the top is like cutting it off concrete.
But progress is happening with over 200 plants a week being completed.

On the whole the plants all look healthy. Berries are apparent on at least 60% of the Siberian plants, so the males are active. The main site of 2011 planted Siberians have two male planting regimes. One is the classic Russian of one male/4 females/one male in a moxed male/female row – with these mixed rows have two rows of females one either side of a mixed row. This area has 900 plants of Klaudia; Altaiskaya; Sudarushka and Augustina. The second plot is of the same size but the males are placed with only 2 females between each male and planted with two all female rows aside each mixed row. Next month I will survey the plants to see which system is more successful.

In terms of disease the whole site is being surveyed at the moment, but I expect there are around ten plants showing signs of leaf discolouration. Subject to it being dry tomorrow – all plants will get another dose of seaweed. It certainly seems to be keeping them clean. With 5000 plants on site, I would expect some to have problems. Those infected will have the worst branches pruned.
Seaweed is quite expensive (£11/litre) but this covers approximately 500 plants so the cost is around 2.2p/plant/application.
I am hoping that the applications will reflect in the quality of the berries. The seaweed has little nitrogen in it but provides a serious kick of trace elements.

Insect life seems to be very calm at the moment. The attacks of vapourer moth is over and in all they only affected 4 plants this year. So I would suggest the worst period for attack is mid to late April.

I went to see our farm contractor yesterday to talk through the best way to reduce the impact of heavy rain in winter waterlogging the plantation. It would be possible to have a new drain installed. Another option could be to run a subsoiled down the middle of each row. But we have opted to use a mole attachment to the subsoiled and pull it past the ends of each row. This will link into existing field drains. Some of the waterlogging is in places where the soil has been badly compacted and damaged in previous years. The site used to be used for an International scout Jamboree. With 10,000 people on site for a week the area had many sceptic tanks sunk into it. Removing the tanks has left areas of deep holes backfilled with subsoil – which becomes waterlogged and the seabuckthorn hate it.

Changing the subject we all know that seabuckthorn has a sour taste character. Sugar is a potential ingredient to deliver a balanced taste.
Earlier this year the World Health Organisation came out with the need for people to take less than 10% of their total daily calories from added sugar. The American Heart Association recommends between 6 and 9 teaspoons a day. So it was little surprise that the subject came up again on BBC news as it also featured in the newspapers on may 19th.
The problem is that news is reported in such a direct manner that all sugar becomes bad for you – with the inference that natural sugar in fruit is a problem. Richard Reid from Innocent Juice came a fine rebuff to these comments placing the advantages of eating fruit as a multi nutritious package with natural sugar balanced with fibre that is an excellent part of a balanced diet. But the inference still is that sugar intake – whether natural or not must be cut.
This of course then is waiting for another part of the medical profession to say how important it is to eat not 5 but 7 portions of fruit and vegetables per year.
It is no wonder that consumers get confused.
Television advertising for toothpaste also suggests that fruit/ fruit juices are acidic and that damages tooth enamel.

The government has spent huge amounts on diet education, but current consumer lifestyles demand food now and on the go/ processed foods. Against this heart disease/diabetes/obesity are still massive challenges. The message that a balanced diet of natural foods just does not seem to be attractive enough to be accepted. Even though it is a life impacting message.

So back to sugar and seabuckthorn – should we be worried. I would say no – as long as it is considered a multi-nutrient fruit that is part of a balanced diet.
There are some interesting sugar replacers. I came across the Norwegian Sukrin at the Natural Food and Organics Fair. Expensive, but a valid alternative.
But do we need alternatives if the amount of seabuckthorn that is sweetened and eaten is in moderation.

Of course, I am also hoping that my Siberian varieties will prove to be sweet enough to eat off the bush – as they should be, but we shall see.

Which brings me to a final thought. That with berries on the bushes this year – I think the time is coming for an open day on the farm – possibly in August, when the berries are ripe – or at least some of them.

At last enough rain to soften the ground – in fact the first true all day rain since April fool’s Day, making a total of 14mm in 38 days.

The last week or so has been dedicated to weeding around plants; spiking the surface of the ground with an even bigger fork (10″) and then surrounding the plants with a liberal covering of green waste compost. The process is – or has been, incredibly slow but I have to keep reminding myself of why I am doing it.

The sight of the diseased plants last year is still very fresh. Mulching covers a range of needs. It keeps down the weeds allowing the younger plants access to available food and water; but it is the thought of improving the soil health by feeding soil fungi that is my main focus. I certainly have no shortage of worms but improving the organic matter in the soil is the aim.

There is the theory that to have berries with high concentration of nutrients I need to keep the plants stressed. If this is so then  my hard clay soil will provide this. Once baked hard it becomes impenetrable for surface roots that are the norm with seabuckthorn. But maybe this environmental pressure will have an impact on the nutrient concentrations in the berries – will it be better or worse – this summer will finally show the results.

Which raises the issue of the term “quality”,

Seabuckthorn produces a berry with 190 nutrients which work in synergy to provide a number of potential health benefits for humans and animals. As a statement this is fine for those that know about seabuckthorn or have a tradition of using it. To the wider market that have never heard about seabuckthorn one needs to provide a clear, credible and memorable message.

It is fact that seabuckthorn contains 190 or more nutrients. But is this relevant to the consumer? Seabuckthorn is a food not a medicine – that is its legal definition, but its composition and its past use indicate that it is more than just a food. It provides a concentrated resource of many nutrients that are recognised as providing benefit to the consumer. The supplement industry in Europe is huge. Consumers seem willing to take vitamins, minerals and omega fatty acids in recognition that these nutrients are an important part of their diet, but gaining acceptance of the importance of consuming 5 (or 7 ) portions of fruit/vegetables per day seems less deliverable. So what is so appealing in a supplement that is not in a natural food?

A supplement is a simple, concentrated product that by label declaration will deliver a daily requirement of a given nutrient.
Vitamins are an accepted necessity of life. Lack of vitamins is understood as being bad for you – therefore taking additional vitamins must be good for you and will make you healthy. It is a simple message and an easily resolved issue: One pill a day with minimum effort, cost and time. The message and product are simple and that makes it trustworthy and attractive in a world that demands solutions without penalties.

How do we achieve the trustworthiness of the simple, yet non-natural supplement for our highly nutritious seabuckthorn berry?

In my view we have to cut through the mass of information and make it relevant to consumers and consumer lifestyles. Health and the body are not simple and neither is seabuckthorn but the message that seabuckthorn is a natural supplement for overall health is as simple as the one conveyed by the purchase of vitamin C.

To understand that a natural product can influence health we have to understand the mechanisms that deliver the benefit. Natural products in their raw state have variable quality. These variables will impact upon the ability to deliver benefit. Therefore we must investigate what makes seabuckthorn special; define the important nutrients and the concentrations that deliver benefit and how to grow and process the fruit in order to deliver consistent, credible quality standards.

These quality standards are the key to delivering the trustworthiness that consumers see in supplements. They are the key to a simple message. The key to understanding what seabuckthorn is.

Supplements

Yesterday, ben and i were working in the seabuckthorn and there were a number of issues that were current.

The first was a three year old, strong, healthy Klaudia plant was half striped of its leaves and covered in vapourer moth caterpillars (Orygia Antiqua). Attractive and beautiful though this caterpillar is, it is also very destructive. Last year they savaged a large German four year old bush. On the basis that I sprayed all bushes three weeks ago and there was nothing on this one, it is disappointing that I missed this. The response was manual removal, and as far as I know it is the only plant on the field with such an infestation. Yesterday 1200 plants were seaweed sprayed with no other signs of attack. The rest will be checked out tomorrow and it will be interesting to see if there are other plants in the same position.

It is also a time of year for micro moth caterpillars to start emerging. These emerge on the ends of stems and are characterised by the ends of leaves sticking together and twisting around the caterpillar. It not only provides a secure house for the caterpiller but also a feed source. My solution is regularly walking the rows and untwisting each leaf house and pulling out the offending bug.

Of the seven plants that I found with leaf disease issues I pruned them back yesterday. Two required no attention. In variety terms 2 elizaveta; 2 Inya; 1 Klaudia. Only two plants I would describe as being a problem. It will be interesting to see whether the disease spreads onto the rest of these plants are whether the prune has cut out the infection.

Following the last blog I thought that actually the problem that I need to solve is developing a healthy soil. So I have started composting the plants that I have weeded. 120 done yesterday. Each plant having been cleared of all plant growth 50cmx50cm around the stem is then pronged with an 8″ fork all around the plant. Then 5 shovelfuls of green waste compost around each. It looks like a long process, but it will cut out a lot of weed management over the summer.

That’s it – update on the dreaded vapourer moth early next week.

Three weeks is almost up since the last dose of seaweed on the seabuckthorn. So this afternoon I started on the plants that were in the critical area last year for disease. three weeks ago there were three suspect plants showing a sign of desiccation. this time I have found seven plants in six rows of 100 plants. The encouraging thing is that the problems are not in one particular variety. Two plants have one whole branch badly effected. the others are very small signs. So tomorrow I will prune out the problem. It is early in the season yet and it is only odd individual plants, but still disappointing.

On a more optimistic note though across the whole field the plants are on the whole growing fast. I am weeding around 100 plants each morning. The clay soil is starting to bake hard. On Sunday we had 5mm of rain, which is the first for 15 days. This has had little impression on the hardness but it is softer under the old dry grass cuttings around each plant. On the basis of this I think I am going to mulch with old hay that has not been used up by the sheep that have been living in our farm buildings this winter. I will mulch some with green waste compost, but some with the hay. The hay being at no cost is an advantage. It also is easier to get to the plants as the ground is still not hard enough for delivery lorries that will bring in the compost. Timing is becoming critical. As weeds are growing as fast as I can clear them from around the plants, I need to mulch having weeded otherwise I will be a slave to the plants all summer.

The males that were hit hard by disease last year have recovered well, but we shall have to see how successful pollination is this year.

My compost tea maker is still not working as I am still waiting for the compound that I use for seabuckthorn is still to be connected up to the mains electric. This is why the plants are getting a second dose of seaweed. I have dropped the rate of concentration down slightly to 200ml per 10 litres of water. I am thinking that will disease showing I will possibly reduce the timing of application down to two weeks. If organic disease control is about stress management then keeping on top of weed competition and regular foliar feed is about as far as I can go. I could give them some irrigation but having resisted this since I started I would prefer not to use this unless we come into a very long dry period. Our water table is still high, so less surface water I hope will enough the plants to grow deeper roots.

I visited the Natural and Organic Show in London last week. There were three stands with seabuckthorn. One from the US; one from Estonia and another from the Czech republic. Others showed interest but there was a general lack of knowledge about the plant. One interesting product was a natural sugar replacer – not stevia. When making seabuckthorn jam, I am concerned regarding the amount of sugar involved. Finding a viable replacer that is natural but low in calories may be of interest. Seabuckthorn is a fruit associated with health benefit. It makes no sense to produce products that will provide consumers with not only the healthy nutrient package of the fruit, but then follow through with companion ingredients that keep to the same health concept.

Healthy product message is about maintaining simple, understandable and consistent quality and purpose. With still eighteen months before our first harvest of a commercial size we now need to hone in on this message and concentrate on how to turn it into what consumers are looking for.