What is weather? As a farmer the weather is a variable over which you have no control. One can try to manage the consequences of weather but before taking action the qustion is – is this a normal phenomenon or a freak incident.
This last winter was very wet and I held off planting the new stock from Siberia until the ground conditions improved in the early spring. But in reality the water table was still high and the young plants hated it. In fact I have lost a lot of them.
Rain may not be a big problem, but combined with heavy clay soil the effect is a soil that is nearly anaerobic.
We are told by climate change experts that the weather will feature extremes so heavy rain, and potentially periods of drought.
Some of my mature german plants have suffered from 90% leaf drop this summer. Is this a result of the wet ground conditions. In reality it is only two plants, but when it is a five year old plant it is a concern to see such a problem without knowing the background reason.
I think it was a result of drainage – or waterlogged ground as a result of a long period of heavy rainfall.
The German plants this year have a smaller yield, but larger berries.
Waterlogging will also mean a draining away of natural nutrients – so I am putting this down to my poorer yield that I should have compensated for with additional foliar feeds.
This is topical as over the past week we have had 30mm of rain in four days. The bonus is that it is becoming easy to pull weeds, but after a wetter than average year, ground conditions need to be good in the autumn in order to spread the mulch compost.
So I need to be thinking about improving the drainage of the orchards.
But the immediate focus is on next week – as a start on picking the German and Finnish berries.
Without machinery this means by hand. Then onto mesh racks to pick out the trash of leaves. Awash through then air dry and chill before freezing.
Now that sounds simple doesn’t it.
I will be timing the process against yield picked and how much we achieve in a day.
I am going to trim off the outer leaves first to give some better access to berries. Last night I thought that we should turn these into tea. So the evenings next week will also be steaming and drying leaves.
Probably at the same time I am going to mix in some gogi leaves, and possibly some lemon thyme for additional flavouring.
Wouldn’t it be good to have a 36 hour day.
The rain has stopped now – so that’s the end of the ramble. But one thing that is certain is that growing seabuckthorn here is built on experience. That is why this project feels like a ten year learning curve.
Before I sign off – it is more than a learning curve – it is a challenge.
At the back of our fridge I put some berries from the Siberian plants that were picked in June.
They came out after supper a couple of nights ago.
Not all varieties were edible, but the Elizaveta was sweet and very good.
This is a problem, because Elizaveta is the one variety that I am really struggling with. At the moment its leaves look curled and not happy – although a good colour.
How am I going to get this variety to grow like the others.
I could give it up, but I think the berries are so good that it is worth giving them extra effort to see if there is a method to bring them into good condition all year.
So 2014/15 another challenge on the list will be to persuade the Elizaveta that the UK is a good place to live – and hopefully reward the effort with some precious berries.
