Briar Farm

Kaki persimmon going into the forest garden section of our glasshouse.

We’re excited to see how this one gets on.

Variety: Rojo brilliante

Honestly, I remember their insulation value being pretty poor! The thing disintegrated in my hands as I got it out.

It is isn’t it! Every days an adventure at the moment.

You probably have to be a certain age to remember these snorkel parka jackets! Proper blast from the past.

Found wrapped around an old water pump pipe for insulation.

It’s always a bit eerie cutting your way into an old glasshouse knowing that no one’s set foot in there for decades.

This glasshouse should be an interesting one; it’s one of the closest to the house and seems to have more contents in it than others we’ve cleared out.

That’s great thanks for that. Liked the look of the wide nozzle, looks a bit less intense on the glass.

Could I ask what you’re using? We’ve got a big glasshouse clean to do soon and we’re currently doing by hand!

After a solid morning brushcutting some chill time in the hammock is in order!

If anyone needs me, I’ll be dozing in the glasshouse.

Shaping up to be a pleasant day here. We’ll be strimming some access paths and plotting out new hedgerows, paths and dead hedges.

A wet and dreary one out here today. We made good headway clearing the glasshouse and hauling old equipment out of the way.

Sorry missed this. So we’re working on a manifold that will irrigate in zones. Some drip feed, some overhead and some lay flat moveable fine spray depending on the application.

All a bit of an experiment at the moment but want to get it right to cut right down on watering time

Picked up an orange and buttercream cake topped with jam made from seabuckthorn grown on the farm.

This was made by our very talented local baker. Great to see some of our more unusual produce going to such good use!

Prepping new ground ready for planting.

This area, which is inside our market garden fence, will be a basketry willow coppice.

A very exciting parcel has arrived! Peach and nectarine trees to plant in the glasshouse.

These will form the ‘canopy’ of our forest garden and will be underplanted with a wide variety of perennial edible plants.

We will also be adding apricot and persimmon trees to the mix

Some very low-tech threshing and winnowing of our home grown population wheat.

A tiny harvest but incredibly satisfying. We hope to scale this up over the coming years and get more people involved at all steps of the process.

Oof that sounds tough. Yeah we have very little stone here and it’s pretty easy since we’ve rewetted the soil to get it out.

Areas that are more compacted or tricky we do the same, just keep strimming to the ground until it exhausts them

Getting asked lots of questions about how we deal with the bramble regrowth in the newly cleared glasshouse.

Simple answer is when we see fresh shoots we nip the root ball out with a mattock. Look at the size of some of them!

Seems to be working well so far.

We planted four cherry trees in the glasshouse today.

They will be fan trained in a line right down the centre of the growing area. This will provide a crop but also dappled light to shade the annual beds either side.

So once we’ve got it to ground we hit it with a mulch head on our brush cutter. This breaks it down nicely. I’d say the average depth of the mulch is about 15-20cm, so not much really.

Great to cover the soil and when we want to grow we just scrape it back into pathways and plant

So we wanted a dessert grape that was seedless. Make it much easier to sell we thought. Not really in the headspace for wine grows or anything like that yet.

Gone for two of the standards, Suffolk red and lakemont. Would be interested to trial more, plus some to dry for raisins

It’s paradise! Big plans brewing for this bit

Grapes and pomegranate planted in the glasshouse today. We aim to grow the grapes up in to the eaves and then train along the rafters. This will add dappled shade to plants below while also giving a harvest.

Hannah clearing bramble form the upper reaches of the glasshouse.

Hard work, but satisfying when it comes down in great big slabs!

Windy old day to be tree planting.

Got nearly 100 in today, mostly field maple, holly and hazel.

Honestly, it’s the third year trying to get them to take, I’d be happy with that!

We’ve put em in a border that’s easy to police with a strimmer on all sides so hoping we can keep them in check.

Yep inadvertently well timed. They even got treated to some hot bin juice and mushroom inoculant so they’ll be 6ft high by next week I reckon

Yeah we’re well happy with progress. Didn’t expect to be doing the second half until this time next year. It’s all happening very quickly.

Nothing found yet, no pots of gold, mythical bramble imps or anything!

90 trees replanted today to replace the ones that died in the drought. These are oak and hazel for our hedgerow, coppice, and scrub blocks.

Next planting session it’s field maple, holly and small leaved lime.

Nice hail of Jerusalem artichokes. We’ve struggled with growing these in the past, but this year they’ve done us proud.

That’s 5.5kg off just two plants; headed off for an event on Friday with some other goodies.

Glasshouse clearance coming on well. What was once a solid wall of bramble is slowly becoming a structure.

Lots of glass has blown out from the side walls so it’s a slow job removing it to the skip