I’ve become a bit of a fiend about biodiversity recently, since reading about how monoculture is one of the main threats to bees and therefore life on this planet. As a matter of interest, did you know that Albert Einstein is reputed to have calculated that the human race has four years left to live if we don’t have bees pollinating our crops?

The problem with monoculture is that there is no room for weeds and once the crop has flowered and been pollinated, the pollinating insects have nothing to eat anymore. Because the crops are viciously herbicided (that’s my new word by the way) nothing flowers after the crop. So this farming practice means that many, many millions of insects die of starvation, including bees. Around here, we don’t have such intensive farming of any one crop and the moors have a large supply of natural and wild flowers but even so, I’m determined that we won’t have any more starving bees this year.

Lots of research has gone on (by me) over the winter into old varieties of vegetables and into unusual things that give me a longer growing season. As part of this process, it means I can’t get many of the things I want to grow from my usual seed supplier so I’ve investigated other suppliers and have all my supplies either here already or on order. I’ve stuck to “proper” varieties, no f1 hybrids and almost all are heirloom varieties.

Unusually, this is one variety that I planted last year and remains on my list of “OK” products – it’s a leek called musselburgh and has been around for donkey’s years. These three fine specimens have only been out of the ground an hour and will be eaten by about three hours from harvest to table.


They’re going to become a Leek and Lentil Cobbler, which may sound a bit too “right on vegetarian” for many but I assure you is delicious, especially with the dumplings being brim-full of our own herbs too.

I will be doing dances to the sun gods to hopefully ensure a good summer because it’s going to be experimental all the way. I’m going for two types of grain (quinoa and amaranth), blue-skinned potatoes, turk’s turbans and all sorts of other mad and interesting stuff. I do hope we get a good one.