Archived News

18th June 2010

At the Hampton Court Flower Show in three weeks time, the Royal Horticultural Society theme is ‘Home Grown’. 

Part of the RHS display required arable crops to be grown not too far from Hampton Court, whilst being transportable to site by lorry. 

The designer, Gillian Van Der Meer had successfully grown maize in boxes on a small scale for a previous show, but this year the plan was to grow spring wheat, oats, barley and oil seed rape on a much larger scale:  300 pallets had collars attached and were laid out in a field at Manor Farm, with good access for fertilising, irrigation and loading.   Contractors filled the pallets with soil and Gillian and our eldest son, Edward spent hours raking and sowing the seed by hand.

Wheat grown in pallets

The project has had its challenges, not least the atrocious winter; snow, frost and torrential rainfall followed by a heat-wave in May!  

Over recent weeks our agronomist, Andy Gay noticed that the crops just weren’t getting enough nutrients from the soil which didn’t appear to be the sandy loam with compost mix that had been expected.  Therefore the crops have been fed and fertilised to try to give additional nutrients and bring them more in line with the growth stage of crops directly in the ground.

Ed lifting a pallet with the tele-handler

In farming it’s difficult to predict precise dates for harvest with so much depending on weather, pests and diseases and break-downs.  So being asked to grow crops that must be ready for a particular date in July is unprecedented and has led to the whole family being involved and at least three members of staff.  Our boys were particularly useful when the irrigation hose had to be moved every four hours for weeks on end, with a watering plan on the kitchen wall and texting each other with reminders! 

Unfortunately the oil seed rape was eaten by pigeons and the pallet crop has been written off; just as we’ve lost fields of oil seed rape in the past, but in those instances we re-plant with an alternative crop and later harvest.

Loading the lorry with crops

Despite the set-backs I was relieved to see three lorry loads of pallets set off from Manor Farm yesterday for Hampton Court Palace.  Gillian now has the exciting and final challenge of bringing ‘Home Grown’ to life and we wish her well.