Growing the passion...
We are passionate about our growing here at Strawberry Fields and making sure that we provide our customers with the very freshest, in season produce 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year.
Check out below what we have been put up to on the growing front over the past few weeks.
Why our vegetables?
Growing is at the heart of what we do....it makes us real and ensures that you will not find any fresher vegetables - what can be better than vegetables harvested sometimes minutes before you buy them?? The squeakiness of our cabbage will not be beaten!
Adam and the outside team have been busy with the growing over the past few weeks. It’s a really crucial time of year to get the seeds/plants in the ground – we have been lucky that we have had some great weather to get them going. The fields opposite the shop have been planted with various vegetables which are just starting to appear. In the ground at the moment we have carrots, beetroot, parsnips (middle photo above), an array of cabbages, purple sprouting, spinach (top right), white turnips (top left), sweetcorn, broccoli, cauliflowers and broad beans just to name a few.
We always have big trouble with rabbits, pigeons and pheasants eating the young vegetable plants. They love the young, tender leaves and once eaten off the plants will have trouble reestablishing again and will most probably die. We overcome this by covering the plants in a soft fleece blanket to hopefully prevent them being eaten too much!
You can see in the photo to the right the blanket and the shop in the background of the vegetable field. We have also rabbit fenced the whole field to prevent the Peter Rabbits of the rabbit population getting in. It is not an easy job to get the plants established enough so that they aren’t eaten!
Below are also photos of the fleece blanket that we put over the plants – keeps them nice and cosy too!
You will also see the old tractor that we still use to plant all of our vegetable plants. We have a planter on the back that holds three people who carefully drop the vegetable plants into a module which then turns and puts them in the ground.
Our freshly harvested vegetables can be found stocking the shop 7 days a week and on the menu in the restaurant. We will always make the most of what is in season, food always tastes its best when in season and is as nature intends.