May is one of the busiest and most exciting months of the year for us here on the farm. As we step fully into spring, both the countryside and our orchards come alive and there is much to do, with everyone enjoying working hard in the fresh air and (hopefully!) sunshine. May is also possibly the prettiest month of the year on the farm and the orchards are stunningly beautiful and constantly changing as our trees come into blossom, with different varieties flowering at different times.
We have 10 beehives on the farm and the bees help to pollinate the flowers on the trees, while also making deliciously rich, sweet honey. After pollination, fertilization needs to take place and this is weather dependent, taking just a few hours if the weather is warm, or sometimes several days if it is colder. Different apple varieties have different windows of opportunity to allow this to happen. Our Cox trees need this to happen quickly, so a few sunny days at the right time can result in a bumper Cox crop. This is always good news, as the Cox is not only a firm favourite with wholesale customers and at our farmers’ markets, but it is also a key ingredient of our most popular juice, Cox & Bramley.
While some of our team are tending to the orchards, others are busy harvesting vegetables and herbs for the 17 farmers’ markets where we have fruit and vegetable stalls. Rhubarb, Florence onions, cavolo nero, green and red kale, beetroot, tomatoes and asparagus are all harvested at this time of year, along with many of our popular herbs such as wild garlic, mint, lovage, chives and nettle tips.
By mid-May, the glasshouses will be dripping with deliciously ripe strawberries and we all lend a hand to make sure that they are picked at their very best. This is a job that the children love to help with, always sampling as they pick to ensure our strawberries taste as delicious as they look! Kent strawberries are well-known for being particularly sweet and soft. We grow several varieties on the farm, including Red Glory, Murano and Malling Centenary and these are carefully packed in bio-degradable, multi-use, recyclable punnets before being delivered to our Borough Market shop and our farmers’ market stalls, where customers are eagerly awaiting their first homegrown strawberries of the summer.
In the cherry orchards, the cherries are starting to form in small green bunches on the trees. They look like tiny bunches of grapes at this time of year but will soon fill out and start to ripen. We introduced pick-your-own cherries at the farm in 2020 which was hugely popular with our locals. The pruning of plum trees also continues in May – did you know that you can’t prune plums in any month that is spelt with an ‘r’ in it?!
Development work continues across the farm throughout the year. This May we are turning 4 acres of old orchard, which is at the end of its life, into a new vegetable field. Brassicas, asparagus and root vegetables are just a few of the vegetables that are being planted in the new field.
The farm, the produce we grow, and the work we do, represents a constantly evolving cycle, changing with the seasons and to meet the demands of all our customers.
