Grow your own cauliflowers
That’s not such a frivolous dream any more. Or it might not be this year, at least. The National Farmers’ Union is warning that we could see a wholesale desertion of the crop in 2008 after last year’s bad weather saw the chunky staple of a British roast dinner turn into a loss-maker for its members.
For every acre of cauliflower they grow, they lose somewhere between £400 and £500 as the supermarkets refuse to pay them more than 18p a head. When it costs 35p a head to produce its an income that can’t be sustained.
And yet for once it’s not entirely the supermarkets’ fault. Last summer’s floods meant that the crop had to be planted late, and so the harvest that should have started at the beginning of winter is only now getting underway. As such we have a glut on the supermarket shelves, and the likes of Sainsbury’s are having to punt them out at two for £1, or risk having tons of unwanted produce going to waste.
Suddenly cauliflower isn’t the guaranteed cash crop it once was, and so its continued propagation - in the UK at least - is in doubt. That will likely push up prices next year as we face a shortage, making growing at home a financially sensible proposition.
In the UK, Thompson and Morgan sells 325 cauliflower seeds for £1.69, which assuming an unrealistic 100% success rate could average out at around half a penny per head.
For £1.29, Unwins will sell you 100 seeds ready for planting four weeks from now and harvesting from September onwards, while Suttons does 250 seeds for a bargain £1.25.
But the biggest consideration isn’t the cost of the seeds, but the size of the land you need to grow them. Cauliflowers are a greedy vegetable, demanding 18in of space both horizontally and vertically for each plant, so they’re not really suitable for a smaller plot or allotment. Not when you consider how many beans you could grow in that space.
More information about the falling price of cauliflower crops and the threat to a future harvest, can be found through these links:
Low prices force farmers to give up on cauliflowers, The Independent
Greedy supermarkets are ‘killing off caulis’, Metro
Cauliflower under threat, says NFU, Telegraph
Technorati Tags:
farming, flooding, garden, self sufficiency, self+sufficiency, vegetables
There are plenty of how-to guides to chicken-keeping; it’s a bit of a burgeoning industry. This one, though, stands out from the crowd. It delivers exactly what it says on the cover and, assuming no prior knowledge on the part of the reader, starts out with an extensive and balanced list of the pros and cons of keeping your own home flock. Right from the off it’s a realistic, if slim volume that’s not afraid to admit that chickens in the garden might not be right for you.
RSS feed
Our various salad crops are approaching readiness, and with 23 tomato plants of four different varieties to choose from we’re hoping for plenty to eat, and even more left over for another batch of chutney to see us through the winter.
An early morning picking session bagged us a bumper crop of beans, taking our total for the year so far well beyond what we produced in the whole of last summer, and it appears there are still more to come.
We had our first proper harvest at the weekend. Three types of beans: French, runner and broad. Not a huge amount of any variety, but enough to cook ourselves a three-bean risotto for dinner.
With summer in full swing, the plot was due some mid-season maintenance. We moved the tomatoes outdoors, built a climbing frame for the cucumbers and pulled an impressive number of weeds from the carrot runs.
The chickens’ future home arrived last week. Very exciting. Having got permission from the council’s environmental health people to keep chickens in the garden, it was great to finally have their home arrive, despite the missing bolts and the fact they’d tried delivering it a day too soon.
I’m about to launch myself back into the world of poultry and eggs, as I’ve put in an order for a coop. It won’t be here for another month, which gives me plenty of time to source my laying ladies, which have been named Margot, Gerry (Geraldine, not Gerald, natch) and Barbara even before they arrive.
This book delivers exactly what it says on the cover starting out with an extensive and balanced list of the pros and cons of keeping your own home flock. Right from the off it’s a realistic, if slim volume that’s not afraid to admit that chickens in the garden might not be right for you. If they are, though, then this is the only book you need.
This is what the 15 jars of our finished apple jelly looked like. They’re much darker than crab apple jelly, which is a light pink. The rich red brown of this batch is most likely down to the variety of apple we picked.
Chilis not only taste great - when used appropriately and in moderation - they look good, too. Growing as colourful fruits on small bushes, they make an attractive addition to a windowsill or conservatory or, if you have a suitably sunny spot outside, a pot in the garden. They’re also the perfect crop for the self-sufficientist without a garden of their own.
Self sufficiency doesn’t all have to be about growing your own vegetables, keeping chickens in the garden or screwing a solar panel to your roof. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest difference.
My electricity supplier actually wants us to use less energy rather than more, with the help of a free energy monitor that tracks your usage and costs. Watching it change as you switch lights on and off is proving strangely addictive.