Teetering on the edge of ‘The Hungry Gap’

By Charlotte Steel, Growing Apprentice at the Farm. You can read more posts by Charlotte on her very own blog: apprenticegrower.wordpress.com

‘The Hungry Gap’ is the time of year when fresh veg is hard to come by in our maritime climate. It’s usually in full swing April/May time when the overwintered brassicas have bolted and before the new season’s first plants are ready for harvest (broad beans being some of the earliest). There are a few options available for bridging the gap such as storing food, cropping from autumn sown broad beans and (a more modern approach) relying on polytunnels. Hooray for plastic!

Through the winter the polytunnels have enabled us to grow oriental leaves, lettuce, rocket, chard, herbs and kale meaning that each week we’ve had something to go into the vegbag. Hopefully this will continue through the dreaded ‘Hungry Gap’ – although with the icy Siberian wind blasting us at the moment it looks like it’ll be a close call. Even the super hardy oriental brassicas are beginning to look a bit thin on the ground.

We’ve been sowing seeds for a few months now and there are seed trays everywhere on the farm. The cold weather is holding things back, growth is slow and steady. It feels like if/when a warm spell comes along we’ll have a riot on our hands – literally thousands of seedlings crying out to be potted on or planting out. The trick will be where to put them all! In the meantime we wait.

Pretty amazing, but nevertheless true – we’ve been planting out lettuce seedlings that were sown in November/December. They’ve survived the cruel cold, slowly growing in the module trays. I admit they’re not the healthiest looking specimens but every lettuce deserves a chance in life, and that’s what we’ve given them.

Lettuces are delicate. Planting them out can be a tricky balance between respecting their fragility and making sure that they’re given the best start out in the soil. Lettuce is a cool weather crop which is fairly cold tolerant but has thin leaves susceptible to freezes and drought. A complex, fragile thing.

Lettuce plants are shallow rooted and the root system is pretty delicate so you have to be careful not to disturb them too much when you’re planting them out. That said it’s probably wise to tease out individual plants that have grown together in a module so that they are not competing for space and nutrients in the same patch of ground. (Lettuce seeds are teeny tiny and it’s very hard to make sure you only get one seed per module.) Planted out 15-30cm apart in rows 30cm apart is the recommended spacing.

I’ve planted a lot of lettuce in the last week. I shall be monitoring closely to see whether my technique gave them a good start.