Category: Growing our own

Growing our own

An Update from David

britishseabuckthorn

It hardly seems possible that this time last year we were planning out another year. A natural cycle of winter pruning, hoping for a successful pollination in March leading through to a new harvest in July.

A year on, and we are still thinking about that natural cycle, but life has changed. The natural cycle remains, but every customer now is a personal customer. We sell a very specialised fruit and every personal order values sea buckthorn so we need to nurture and ensure that quality is king.

The original concept of growing sea buckthorn was underpinned by its nutritional value. The historical context of it being valued as a traditional remedy for centuries added to its credibility. This tradition inspired plant breeders across the world to tame wild varieties. Wild or tame, the berries have the potential to be so much more than being a “little orange berry”.

As a grower we are committed to a natural cycle that provides a little more knowledge with every year that passes. We started with German and Finnish varieties back in 2009. These plants are now mature. The Finnish plants have been a challenge, but it was rewarding in 2020 when we could pick the variety Terhi for the first time. Like our Siberian plants, the Finnish ones did not enjoy our mild, wet weather. But success is sweet when it happens.

In 2012, with the help of the InCrops team at the University of East Anglia we imported our first Siberian plants. This was very exciting as these promised so much. Thornless, high yielding, better tasting, easier harvesting – the panacea of sea buckthorn growing.

In ten years we have seen only one crop of Siberian berries. Reality mellows initial enthusiasm, but not the determination to grow Siberian sea buckthorn. The consideration that moving plants across continents required them to adapt to a new climate and soil had not been factored into the original plan. 10 years on our learning curve has been steep and frustrating. Now in 2021 we are planting a new Siberian orchard with a new planting design to solve the barriers that have prevented Siberian success.

As we move forward in the orchard, we have been so fortunate to team up with Dr Lucy Williamson -who as a nutritionist is deciphering what sea buckthorn is.

Our fascination for sea buckthorn was driven by its nutritional potential. The 190 phytochemicals found in the berry drive the potential benefits, recognised over the centuries. We analyse our berries and the laboratory gives sheets of facts. Understanding what they mean is key to knowing what we are doing, why and how we can change our methods to improve berry quality.

Lucy’s speciality is gut health. This is not an area normally associated with sea buckthorn. We tend to think of health as a reaction to a disease or ailment. We should think more proactively of maintaining good health and this comes back to the ancient concept that food is health.

For food to be the driver of health it has to have the right qualities. Understanding what those are and why they are important is essential so as growers we focus on improving berry quality. Lucy is our key to developing the understanding of why sea buckthorn has the potential we believe it has. The gut is the place where our food is transformed into the vital nutritional building blocks the body needs. Understanding how it works is a new and complex science and with Lucy being specialist in this field will guide our focus as to how we grow to produce berry quality that relates to health.

Growing our own

A Crucial Time of Year

britishseabuckthorn

A blog post from David

Change is an issue that governs life. As another storm passed this weekend the sun has returned seeming to bring on spring. This is a crucial time of year for us. Our first research into sea buckthorn started in 2006. Then the challenge was from where to source plants. By 2009 we had the six German female varieties and three Finnish. Wild UK sea buckthorn we recognised as very thorny making picking a painful exercise. When it became apparent that thornless varieties had been bred in Siberia this had to be seen as the future. These varieties had been adopted in Canada and seemed to also offer higher yields, larger berries and higher natural sweetness.

Farming is about working within a natural environment to produce a natural product. The term – we are what we eat, makes growing sea buckthorn such an exciting prospect. Its berries, leaves and even its bark offer natural benefits that can help to preserve health.  The fact we are developing a healthy product makes us look to what consumers are wanting. As we move into a new year the food and drink experts put forward their ideas as to what is trending. There are no real surprises as trends evolve over time, but health does seem to be on most people’s minds. One trend relates to an aging population recognising how healthy food can influence mental and physical health. 40 to 54 years olds demand snack foods that satisfy hunger but also boost nutritional needs. Instant access to internet knowledge has made younger generations more knowing on quality. Maybe this is a factor in that choosing products that promote gut health is becoming mainstream.

Within this mix there has been no mention of the words natural, nor organic. I would like to believe that there is a link that healthy food tends to have fewer ingredients that are more traceable and that foods are becoming less processed and closer to their natural roots. We grow our sea buckthorn organically because it offers complete clarity in that it is a food that is a product of the natural environment. The nutrients within the berry have evolved over thousands of years that has been appreciated to provide a health benefit because of the ability for each nutrient to work in synergy with each other. If we introduced any additional chemicals into the growing environment we risk breaking that natural formulation.

At the start of this post I mentioned that this is a crucial time of year. For two years now the weather in early March has blown through our orchard and dispersed pollen, not between our male and female plants – but to the wind. No pollination means no fruit. So this coming week we will start a trial to put up windbreaks to break the wind tearing through the plants. It is another example that in farming, progress relates to the annual cycle. Each year exposes a problem – that can only be solved as the following year comes around.

Growing our own

Update from the field

britishseabuckthorn

2019 created a revolution in our plans for growing sea buckthorn. The decision to harvest the berries by cutting branches and then freezing them so the fruit can be easily shaken off meant creating our own processing machinery, but it also meant managing the plants differently.

In countries where this practice is common, the plants have a single stem, approximately one metre high. Branches grow from the top of this stem which are then harvested every three years.

Our intent up until 2017, was to hand pick our berries. So we allowed our plants to become multi-stemmed with multiple side shoots. Now all these have to go.

To do this too suddenly would potentially kill the plants, so we will remove the lower branches over a three year period allowing the plants to adapt to this new form.  It is a risk and some plants, or some varieties might not adapt to the process, but that is the nature of developing the sea buckthorn crop.

Pruning off these branches would normally be done when the plants are fully dormant. Our sea buckthorn, both the Siberian and Latvian have had to adapt to our local climate. By the end of January out of 14 varieties , 12 will be showing their first leaves. Pruning off larger branches is undesirable once the plants are out of dormancy, so this hard pruning process will stop in February.

The next major undertaking will be to start planting the 4000 one year old cuttings that we imported from Siberia in October. This will start a new organic plantation taking on all the knowledge we have gained over the past ten years. It is a commitment for the farm as we move further into the era of climate change and the need to adapt to potentially more challenging conditions.

Managing adaption is an interesting concept in an era of climate change. Milder weather will change the way plants behave. If their growing cycle starts earlier in the year, will they continue on to grow viable crops, particularly if the key development stages in the growing cycle are vulnerable to the uncertainties of late winter/early spring weather.

This is a problem if one grows crops in an open, soil based field environment. Growing food in soilless controlled environments may become the solution to all these issues. Technologically feasible these methods can be energy intensive. However we produce food it will have to be sustainable. There are many politically motivating concepts being promoted globally as to how we are going to feed the world. For us now however we have the reality of considering how we respond to reducing our carbon footprint; our energy use; our resource use; our waste. This will be a primary plan for 2020. We may be organic, 50% of our farm may be devoted to wildlife habitat, but the devil is in the detail. Responding to climate change is the responsibility of each and every one of us – neither money nor technology can buy another planet.

Growing our own

Update from the Field

britishseabuckthorn

David, who is in charge of managing our sea buckthorn field at Devereux Farm gives his update on what has been a difficult year in the field.

 

The New Year is a time for reflection and positive planning. I have to admit that it feels good to see 2019 behind us. The year started well with the building of our prototype harvesting system; purchase of a sprayer for applying foliar feeds; and the end of three years of transition to becoming fully organic certified. It was marred however by strong winds in March 2018 which created poor pollination resulting in a small, patchy crop of Siberian berries. This is the second year this has happened and it is a direct consequence of moving a plant from the cold climate of Siberia to our mild coastal weather. In effect it is an example of climate change but critically it is one that we can influence and the fact that we have seen good harvests from these plants in previous years shows that it was just one of those years.

Our harvesting method is now cutting branches, then freezing them in a cold store to -25 deg C. The branches are then put through our prototype berry separator. This removes the berries from the branches but some varieties, such as the Siberian Klaudia and Latvian plants carry a lot of leaf resulting in not all leaf being removed from the berries. So one project for 2020 is to modify the separator to refine the clearing process.

Choosing to harvest by branch cutting means that we need to prune our plants so they will be cut on a three or four year cycle. If plants are only going to be harvested once in three or four years it means we need to triple the size of our orchard. It was for that reason that we imported 4000 new plants from Siberia this autumn. This might sound simple but importing plants is a highly controlled process. Procedures are in place to prevent importing dangerous plant diseases into the country. It took 18 months to ensure the plants came from a certified disease free source – but better safe than sorry.

2019 has been a year of odd weather. By the end of September there had been no rain and the ground was baked hard. Since then it has not stopped and the soil is sodden. The unpredictability of weather was almost as trying as the activities of our politicians throughout the year. Brexit became a painful distraction through 2019 and at last it feels that we can now move on.

So for 2020 – again the Siberian variety Klaudia started to open its buds this week. By mid-February all varieties will be showing enough leaf to have their first spray feed. The ladurner cultivator will start to control the weeds under the plants as soon as the soil is dry enough. We will be extending our audio system to keep the jackdaws away, and trialling wind breaks to improve pollination. The focus for so long has been on growing sea buckthorn, but this year we will start product trials, juicing berries from which to offer British grown, organic sea buckthorn products, which we hope will be good news to those of you looking for a British product!

Wishing you a happy and healthy New Year.