On The Farm at JEPCO

Welcome to the latest look at life on the JEPCO farm! This time, Geoff Tatam gives a mid-summer update on a busy harvest, the final push for salad season and our team’s imminent move to Suffolk.

By this point, the irrigation and harvesting teams are in full swing performing consistent and well-rehearsed cycles of watering, quality checks, spraying and harvesting. This means some long days on the farm, ensuring all customers have good quality crops, in the quantities they need.

Throughout July we’ve harvested over 2000 tonnes of lettuce and with British consumers enjoying lots of barbeques in the sunny weather, we’ve seen an uplift in demand!

Last month we began drilling for ‘over-winter’ salad onions, highlighting JEPCO’s dedication to food production, as the crops will be harvested in spring next year.

There’s no denying that July’s hot weather and record temperatures here in Lincolnshire, which saw destructive wildfires develop in nearby counties, was a challenge for the irrigation and harvesting teams. With only 16 mm of rain throughout July, to which 5.5mm fell on the last day of the month, we relied on our irrigation technology and on-site reservoirs to maintain quality of the produce.

From week 33, the planting team turns its attention to Suffolk. August marks the final planting at our Lincolnshire farm and then we start with the end of season lettuce planting for harvesting in weeks 41 to 45 from Suffolk.

In Lincolnshire, the normal cycles of irrigating, spraying, weeding, pest prevention and harvesting continue, and we anticipate picking around 130 tonnes of salad onions, 1900 tonnes of lettuce and 150 tonnes of radicchio – a red vegetable, popular in salads, that’s often mistaken for red cabbage, when it’s actually a type of chicory.

With further warm weather predicted for the rest of the summer, as well as the bank holiday, we foresee some uplift in bunched salad onions, iceberg lettuces, cos and other salad lines.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our mid-summer update and I’d love to hear how July has been for you.

Until next time!

Geoff

#heatwave #agricultureandfarming #familybusiness #freshproduce