On Thursday morning I was mainly tied up with parish administration and sorting out my own (and Simon's) car insurance for next year. On Thursday afternoon the ground was quite muddy after heavy rainfall and the windy overcast conditions pointed me towards the SouthEast of the Parish onto the better drained farmland where L. J. Betts grow outdoor lettuce. Much of this specific parcel of land has only been used for lettuce for the last four or five years, and production has been greatly facilitated by the construction of a new reservoir, funded by Europe:
The lettuces are planted out using a mix of Sphagnum and Sedge Moss peats that creates a solid cube of peat that is half buried in the soil, and the seedling roots through into the soil from there:
The fields are planted out semi-mechanically on a field scale:
Half grown, the bands of red and green varieties make an attractive pattern set out in the middle distance across the fields:
Although close to, the lines are a bit "wobblier":
Quickly the lettuces become ready to harvest, usually by youngsters from Eastern Europe, working in cutting gangs feeding the cut heads in their plastic sleeves onto the conveyor belt feeding the heads into the harvester/packing unit:
The lettuce growing is rotated around the fields, normally with cereal rest crops, which are in turn harvested, both for grain and straw. Here are some traditional straw bales cut from a "rest" field. You can see the rich flat land of the Medway river terraces in the foreground where the lettuces and cereals are being grown, with the Lower Greensand Ridge rising up in the background:
On the farm to the South, owned by G. M. Day and Sons Ltd, field beans have been used as the break or rest crop, in a main cereal and oil seed rape rotation. The beans are sprayed to dessicate them just prior to harvest (hence the dark brown to blackish colour of the plants), which makes the crop easier to combine. The beans go to animal feed, while the plants are ploughed back in as a sort of green manure:
And finally on the farm next door, owned by the Teachers family, the winter barley has already been harvested and the land disc-ploughed. Today it is already being cultivated and sown with next year's crop in one multi-purpose pass, although which crop it will be is unknown to me as yet:
The black-headed gulls await with interest the grubs that the cultivator turns up - what a feast it is for them!
Tomorrow I'll load up the photos of the wildlife that I managed to spot in the margins of the "lettuce land" fields despite the strong breeze and limited habitat available!
The lettuces are planted out using a mix of Sphagnum and Sedge Moss peats that creates a solid cube of peat that is half buried in the soil, and the seedling roots through into the soil from there:
The fields are planted out semi-mechanically on a field scale:
Half grown, the bands of red and green varieties make an attractive pattern set out in the middle distance across the fields:
Although close to, the lines are a bit "wobblier":
Quickly the lettuces become ready to harvest, usually by youngsters from Eastern Europe, working in cutting gangs feeding the cut heads in their plastic sleeves onto the conveyor belt feeding the heads into the harvester/packing unit:
The lettuce growing is rotated around the fields, normally with cereal rest crops, which are in turn harvested, both for grain and straw. Here are some traditional straw bales cut from a "rest" field. You can see the rich flat land of the Medway river terraces in the foreground where the lettuces and cereals are being grown, with the Lower Greensand Ridge rising up in the background:
On the farm to the South, owned by G. M. Day and Sons Ltd, field beans have been used as the break or rest crop, in a main cereal and oil seed rape rotation. The beans are sprayed to dessicate them just prior to harvest (hence the dark brown to blackish colour of the plants), which makes the crop easier to combine. The beans go to animal feed, while the plants are ploughed back in as a sort of green manure:
And finally on the farm next door, owned by the Teachers family, the winter barley has already been harvested and the land disc-ploughed. Today it is already being cultivated and sown with next year's crop in one multi-purpose pass, although which crop it will be is unknown to me as yet:
The black-headed gulls await with interest the grubs that the cultivator turns up - what a feast it is for them!
Tomorrow I'll load up the photos of the wildlife that I managed to spot in the margins of the "lettuce land" fields despite the strong breeze and limited habitat available!
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