Ken and Tracy Holland’s North Country Growers is renowned nationwide for its unique selection of heritage and micro varieties. They supply many of the region’s and the UK’s best-known chefs, plus the Tea Room at Vallum Farm and the new David Kennedy at Vallum Restaurant. The Vallum Kitchen Garden, poly tunnels and raised beds can be seen from Vallum’s Tea Room and the Restaurant and if you pop by you may be invited to wander through the Kitchen Garden and rub shoulders with chefs who drop by to pick their own.
North Country Growers, Vallum Kitchen Garden, Vallum Farm, Military Road,
East Wallhouses, Newcastle, NE18 0LL tel 01434 672 822, www.vallumfarm.co.uk
This month, Ken is mainly forcing all sorts of varieties of veg in his darkened tunnels at Vallum Farm… Read on! One of the greatest joys of growing is in experimenting and the forcing tunnel on our plot at Vallum Farm is a real pride and joy. All too often as a grower, you don’t know what you’re going to get until you get it, particularly when you’re experimenting as we do. We’ve got sea kale in the forcing tunnel at the moment, which is going to be interesting. The Victorians – who valued it as highly as asparagus – would force it under plant pots, and we’re having a look to see what we can achieve with it.
Mind, it’s not an easy process. We have 600 seeds we are trying to germinate and we’re trying to force a two-year growing process into six months, so watch this space!
The leaves coming out of the forcing tunnel are incredible. They are tender and their colours, because there is no light, are a real surprise. We’re coming up with pinks and reds on our beetroot, and our carrot tops in there are like bamboo shoots. The flavours from these leaves, and those on forced red onion sets and broad bean shoots are completely bamboozling the chefs, and delighting them in equal measure. We also think we’re unique in doing this and there’s a massive buzz when a top chef tells you he can’t source produce like it anywhere else.
Clamp it!
Most households have forgotten the old method of storing fruit and vegetables known as clamping, popular in the days when our plates were ruled by the seasons.
It’s simple and effective for storing all sorts of things including potatoes, carrots, beetroot. All you do is take your harvested produce and make a clamp for it (a box of soil and straw for drainage) and store it outside or in a cold shed
or garage.
I’ve discovered that six or nine months in a clamp can intensify the flavour of beetroot and carrots particularly, and we’ve had very well-known chefs chasing us for 12-month-old produce from the clamp because they like the flavour so much.
We’ve got 14-month-old beetroot now coming out of the clamp and going back into raised beds, and the result is fantastic – beyond expectations. We’ve done the same with carrots, which we stored in sand in a clamp and then re-planted in the raised beds. It’s the science of vegetables!
