Vallum Kitchen Garden is awash with colour
It’s been a long time since I shared news from Vallum Kitchen Garden with you, but that doesn’t mean I’ve had my feet up over the last few months. We’ve had lots of demand for our salad mixes, microshoots and edible flowers; I’m confident that come the end of the summer we will be able to say we’ve sold edible flowers during every week of the year, which is fantastic.
Remarkably, we’ve already started sowing outside. The lack of a real winter so far and having the cloches means that as I’m writing we’re preparing to put turnip, fennel, carrots and radishes into the outside beds.
We’ve been taking bets on when we’ll get our first outside beds cropped. The earliest bet was four weeks; the way the weather is at the moment we’ll have radishes ready in around four weeks, maybe a week after that we’ll have turnip – both of which are unheard of this early in the year. Last year we made the decision to concentrate on supplying the North East’s restaurants. We’ve been supplying down into London and what feels like everywhere else in the last few years, but we’ve now got a lot happening on our doorstep.
The food scene is definitely on the up in the North East – you’ve got the likes of Dave Coulson (Peace & Loaf) , Michael Penaluna (Jesmond Dene House), James Close (Raby Hunt) in Darlington and now Kenny Atkinson (House of Tides); they’ve really upped the game when it comes to food in the North East.
That says to everyone else that they have to keep pushing themselves – that all benefits the North East, good quality competition breeds success and guys are stepping up to the plate.
More from Ken at chefspod.wordpress.com
