Green Growers Case Study
Lead Name: Gwen
Address: 1 Station Cottages, Wansford Road, Nafferton, Driffield, East Yorkshire, YO25 8NJ
Email: greengrowergwen@outlook.com
Website: www.greengrowers.wordpress.com
Open to the public: Please make an appointment in advance.
Is delivery available? Yes – They provide a weekly home delivery service in East Yorkshire, centered between Bridlington and Driffield. For more information, please call or email.
Green Growers Case Study
Green Growers is an organic Market Garden based in Nafferton, East Yorkshire. It is run by Gwen, who has a background in soil science and 25 years experience in organic growing.
This case study is taken from an audio interview, where Gwen took us on a tour of the garden during Summer 2022.
You can listen to the interview on our YouTube channel here.
How do you reach your customers?
I do my selling by delivery – I deliver to Bridlington, Driffied and all the surrounding areas. Some people do pick up their orders from here, and I have a stall outside selling herbs. I also supply some things to Arthur St Trading (another organic veg box scheme).
Is Arthur St Trading the only wholesale trading you do?
I do supply a shop in Bridlington, but only with salads. I used to supply Nut and Nettle (a restaurant in Bridlington).
Do you bring in produce from other suppliers?
Yes, I buy from Suma and also supply Arthur St with Suma products, along with some of my surplus.
And we both have supplies from Organic Pantry, an organic wholesaler. I also get tomatoes from a local producer. But obviously things like these lemons are non locally grown, and come from Organic Pantry. But the chard, apples, beans, plums, spring onions, courgettes, marrows, cherry tomatoes and potatoes, they’re all mine.
Do you only have one local organic supplier?
There is only one.
Do you sell mainly veg boxes?
I produce a list every week, and some people just order from the list, and some people say “send me an £8 box” or “a £12 box”.’
But my boxes are very flexible, I don’t do a standard box. I do tailor made boxes for each individual customer. I take into account how many people are in the house, whether they like salad, whether they are vegetarian or not, in order to judge what things they would like. My system is a lot more complicated, but it does offer a service to a customer. It means they can get exactly what they want.
One of the things I specialise in is mixed salads, with produce like French Sorrel, chives, fennel, buckshorn plantain, red vein sorrel, chard, endive and parsley. I usually add brassicas too (cabbage family), but we are suffering from flea beetles at the moment. I also put edible flowers in the salad, such as calendula. The salads are always quite pretty.
Compost and Soil Regeneration
We have lots of hedges and woody things that need cutting down and we shred them, rot it down and sieve it; and that is my peat substitute, which I use as the foundation of my potting compost. I also add other things to the mix, for example our worm compost, organic fertiliser, lime, wood ash etc. All our plants are raised on potting compost that is produced here. We don’t use peat, and it is all sustainable. It is great, but it is a lot of work.
We are doing a lot of soil regeneration. For example all of the non growing areas have grass that is full of nitrogen fixing clover, when we cut it we add it as a mulch to the crops, which prevents moisture loss but also adds nutrients to the soil. So it is almost like the walkways and non growing spaces are our fallow area, and we take the nutrients from there and add it to the growing area to enrich the soil.
We also recycle to make general compost, which is added to everything we plant. In our raised beds the walkways are lined with shredded woody material. Every 2-3 years that will have composted down, and we throw it on the beds to build up soil carbon, and new wood is laid down. Adding carbon, as well as regenerating the soil takes carbon out of the atmosphere.
We grow comfrey to make a liquid feed. Comfrey has very little fibre, so it nearly all rots down into a liquid. It also has incredibly deep tap roots, so it brings up minerals from the subsoil. It’s mining areas that you couldn’t otherwise reach. That is why it is high in potash. It’s a really tough plant, and it can stand being cut 3 times a year. As well as using it here we also sell quite a lot of it.
We recycle pretty much everything, either as compost or mulch, so none of the nutrients we produce go to waste.
Growing under cover
We have polytunnels, which extend the season, in the spring and the autumn.
How much is the extension?
Well for example I can produce salads all year round, I can grow long season things and get them going early, like tomatoes. It also means that we can overwinter things that would otherwise die. You also get increased heat, so things grow faster. When it comes to things like salads, they are more tender, because they haven’t been buffeted by winds.
We have a rotation of crops in the tunnels, with different crops grown every year (to avoid pests and soil exhaustion).
So when it comes to autumn and winter, how much of your own produce do you sell? Is there a big difference compared to summer?
In the summer it is a good proportion of what I sell, not far off 50%. In winter though, we are down to leeks, artichokes, maybe apples, I still manage to do the salads, but that’s about it.
It’s very seasonal, and there is no way around that, especially if, like us, you are small scale. You won’t have the facilities for storage. Also, I don’t grow carrots, onions or those kinds of staples.
Is there any reason for that?
Partly because they don’t grow well here. But also because other people can grow fields of carrots, and do it in a mechanised way. I do grow potatoes because they take very little work, and parsnips because I can’t get good enough quality otherwise.
When you are small scale you have to look at value, so I grow beans for example, which farmers tend not to grow. So I’m adding in something that otherwise people wouldn’t be able to get.
Do you find that fresh beans don’t actually keep well?
No they don’t, I do buy them sometimes, they often come from Spain; they are over mature and they’ve been kept too long.
The whole supply chain for vegetables is not easy, and I think that the organic supply chain suffers because it is so much smaller in scale. So there is less refrigeration, and there can be more quality issues.
So with local, small scale and organic growing, is there anything that can be done to extend shelf life?
Well if something is grown locally, if it is picked and delivered the next day the quality is going to be so much better.
But there just isn’t enough of it, there are only 4 growers in this area, and we are all getting old, where it’s going to be in 10 years time I don’t know.
