Pumpkin Patches and Polytunnels: Restarting our Kitchen Garden

The wind has dropped, the rain has stopped, and the spring equinox has finally arrived. Needless to say, our green fingers have been itching to get into the earth and, this week, we’ve had the chance to start work on our kitchen garden.

While our hardy lavender plants are happy sitting outside in the elements, our polytunnels create the perfect indoor environment for growing a variety of vegetables. Every year, we grow lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines, garlic, red onions, and a whole load more produce to go straight into our sandwiches and salads that we serve in the summer. Taking advantage of the better weather, we’ve been working hard in the polytunnels, turning over and preparing the soil to create a soft, earthy bed in preparation for sowing our vegetable seeds over the coming weeks.

We do our best to make this process as environmentally friendly as possible, so we use horse manure from our own stables to fertilise the soil by folding and ploughing it into the vegetable beds. While it’s a smelly process in the short term, it promotes the nutrient cycle on our land in the long term and helps to produce some very tasty veg to keep us ticking over!

Directly outside the polytunnels, we’ve been ploughing the earth in preparation for some of our more stalwart seedlings. Our pumpkin patch will be providing produce for the Hitchin Lavender kitchen this summer too, after we plant courgette, butternut squash, and pumpkin seeds in the next few weeks.

We’re also very excited to announce the introduction of a new flower patch by our tearoom this year. Amongst a range of cut flowers, we’ll be growing Indian Summer lilies, Cosmos flowers, which belong to the sunflower family, and Dahlias. This is a bit of an experiment but, all being well, it’ll be a beautiful display for you to come and see. Here’s hoping that it will also allow us to produce some lively bouquets for sale in our shop!

Take a breath of fresh springtime air…

If you’re feeling like letting go of some of the tensions of winter as we move into spring, Hitchin Lavender has a range of workshops and sessions to help you on your way.

Under the lunar light of the spring equinox this evening, John Harrigan will be hosting his ever-popular Moon Meditation, which encourages happiness and peace by focusing on developing your innate intuition. John’s sessions are a great way to take a step back from it all and can be found on his website and through our social media.

For Moon Meditation and a range of other workshops, be sure to keep up to date with Hitchin Lavender Events on Facebook and Instagram!