October in review

October.

Picking in our glasshouses

In October we started picking in our glasshouses again. At our farm in Hempnall we are picking 100% Malling™ Centenary, a UK bred variety from NIAB EMR. It’s great fruit that has a wonderful shape. We love it because the pickers find it so quick and easy to pick and our customers love the consistent quality and flavour. This is a large berry, uniform in shape that as the season continues we will picking a huge amount every day to satisfy our supermarket demand. October was a high volume month for us when it came to picking as we were still picking our tunnel crop that thanks to the good weather ran later than we expected.

As well as picking in the glasshouse there are lots of ‘husbandry’ jobs to be doing. The Malling™ Centenary plants are rather large in their nature so we have to do a lot of tucking of leaves and runners to make sure we have access to pick all the lovely fruit.

In the autumn time we do repairs to the site before the glasshouse season starts really picking up. After the tunnel crop finishes there are plenty of maintenance jobs to do outside to help bring the outdoor season to a close.