All our hard work in the vegetable garden is beginning to bear fruit, literally and at last we have some organic vegetables for sale.
Throughout the winter we have able to supply some of the local bars and restaurants with organic spinach and Swiss chard and in February we built our rather rudimentary but effective green house for early tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and aubergines. A couple of months ago we raised the plastic walls of the greenhouse so the plants could breathe in the unseasonal suffocating heat and this week we have got rid of the plastic altogether and stretched green cloth (sold on a roll) across the top to give the veg some shade.
As always seems to happen in a garden you wait forever and then everything seems to happen at once. A week ago we had a steady supply of cucumbers and courgettes; hundreds of tomatoes which refused to go green; lovely purple flowers all over the aubergine plants; and the occasional lettuce. Just about enough for our home consumption and a few bits and pieces for the bars and restaurants in town. However, almost overnight the purple flowers have turned into miniature aubergines, the tomatoes are turning red on mass, we still have a steady supply of cucumbers and courgettes (although the plants outside the greenhouse have also started producing now) and we are finding it difficult to eat all the lettuces before they go to seed.
Outside the greenhouse it is the same story. The spring this year has been kind to local gardeners and the rain/sun combination has helped the plants flourish early and grow strong enough to resist the onslaught of the summer sun. After months of coaxing, endless weeding and sweet talking the garden is full of salads, mouth watering marrows, sweet courgettes, plum tomatoes and big butch salad tomatoes, European and English type cucumbers, salad spring onions, beetroot, crisp white onions, new potatoes, and artichokes.
We also have a limited supply of English type parsley, bay leaves, mint, spearmint, basil, thyme and oregano.
Shortly we will offer aubergines, peppers, sweet corn and popcorn, French beans, pumpkins, melons, water melons and in a couple of months we will have haricots.
Some of the tomato plants, peppers and aubergines have been donated to us by an elderly Calasparrian gardener, organic as well, who specializes in traditional local varieties, partly because he likes them and partly because he wants to protect and maintain the “original Calasparra vegetables.” It will be interesting to see how they turn out.
We are keen to sell our vegetables in small quantities direct to our customers in order to keep the prices reasonable and we are planning to make up boxes of seasonal vegetables for sale or sell the vegetables individually.
If you are interested give us a ring and we can tell you what vegetables we have and the prices.
If there are enough orders from, for example, one of the urbanizations, we may be able to deliver to a central point or we can arrange a central pick up point in Calasparra.
Some of the produce currently available is featured in the Products section of this webpage.
Call Diana 669 627 718 (English) or Salvador 616 308 588 (Spanish) for more information on the vegetables currently available and the prices.
