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A rare pic of Linda as she cuddles her puppy, Linda works and volunteers with us and her knowlegable calm approach makes her an absolute joy.

Volunteer turned seasonal worker, exceedingly cheerfull and is always able to answer questions.

with marge our resident terrier! caught in a rare moment of relaxation.

Grown in our polytunnels, this picture was taken after their first pass (weeding on this scale is referred to as passes, you would expect to do at least 3 passes throughout the growing season). Carrots hate competition from weed seedlings and as we have lots of chickweed seeds its very important at this early stage to keep up.

We grow our carrots in the polytunnels for 2 reasons. Firstly, because of demand. Our onsite restaurant starts serving our vegetables very early in the year, when most people are still being affected by the "Hungry gap". Growing under cover extends our season and allows us to produce early. Secondly, growing under cover with carrots helps to eliminate the dreaded carrot fly! we have enviromesh screens that fit the doors, so later in the year we can increase ventilation without increasing risk of losing our crop.

Growing under cover is a great way to extend your growing season, these broad beans will be producing pods earlier than those grown outside.

O.J. is our resident bull, he's very friendly......for a bull. We dont recommend you go into his field though!

Last autumn we were proud to display 2 giant pumpkins outside our restaurant and shop, grown onsite organically.

Apparently this year was a difficult one for growing Pumpkins! Not here at Sissinghurst, no sir! Not only did we have a fabulous crop of Uchiki Kuri squashes, Butternut squashes (which need a longer than average growing season) we also had wonderful success with our giant pumpkins. We still have two of our largest examples on display outside our restaurant and shop. Grown Organically, we gave each plant 2 barrows of compost, planted them, watered them in and then gave them no extra food or water at all throughout the season. The only attention the plants recieved was weeding and hoing around them.

As i said before Florence Fennel is easy to grow your main enemy is slugs. Organic slug pellets are available but other prevention methods are bran, copper rings or crushed eggshells and sharp grit.. Personally i like bran the best as it really does work. The only downside is it will need to be reapplied regularly in a ring around your plants, but then you have to do the same with the pellets and bran is cheaper.