March 2019.
We have now entered our sixth year of the Kitchen Garden development at Mount Falcon. The project originally involved taking a new uncultivated section of the estate and turning it into a kitchen garden. The garden is cultivated using organic growing principles and supplies vegetables, herbs, edible flowers and fruit; specialising in baby vegetables and micro leaves and other items which are either difficult or expensive to source, to bring a seasonality and freshness to Mount Falcon’s kitchen. The Kitchen Garden continues its development this year under the direction of our Head Chef, Tom Doyle, and our new Head Gardener, Paul Halbard.
The Kitchen Garden has supplied Mount Falcon throughout the winter months a selection of vegetables, leaves and herbs including kale and salad speciality mixes, jerusalem artichokes, spouts, turnips, swedes, leeks, beetroots, spinach and micro leaves.
Signs of spring are already here, with new growth showing. Of particular interest has been the early purple asparagus which began putting up the first spears of the year mid February in our large polytunnel. The first carrot bed is already sown inside, while Jerusalem artichoke has been reset and planted, from our own tuber stock, in the Kitchen Garden. Shallot sets which were planted in January are already showing. Our heated propagation tables are filling up with the first seed sowings of the year, including this year’s choice of tomato varieties. Summer will soon be here! The quieter winter months allowed for us to plan for this years planting and cultivation schedules and acquire the necessary seed selections. We are looking forward to another busy year.
Happy Gardening!
Paul Halbard.
Head Gardener.
