Will a hard winter mean fewer pests this year? I’m not holding out much hope. It all depends whether you believe the path to redemption lies in ordered hygiene or dynamic balance. In favour of hygiene, the cold will have cleaned things up; a lot of aphids will have perished and leaves and roots harbouring disease will have been killed, thus breaking the disease-carrying bridge between seasons.
Unfortunately my experience of cold winters past is that any benefit will be short lived. Taking an ecological “balance” perspective, this is easily explained. Most pests that make a meal of our crops are also a meal for someone else: aphids are eaten by ladybirds, lacewing and hover fly larvae and parasitized by certain wasps, slugs are eaten by carabid beetles and toads and predated by nematodes. Red spider mites are controlled by the predatory mite phytoseiulus. Unfortunately these farmer friendly “beneficial” organisms will have also suffered in the cold; in fact they tend to be more affected by the cold than the pests (not only do many die, the survivors get dopey and less hungry).
Some pests always survive and, after a cold winter, there are fewer predators to keep them in check. As pests tend to get going sooner and breed faster, a cold winter might be expected to result in a higher population peak before the predators catch up. Hence cold winters may help the hygiene approach to pest management (as propounded by pesticide salesmen) but are not much help to those looking for balance.
7 responses so far ↓
margaret pauffley // January 31, 2010 at 12:42 am |
I love curly kale and wish you included it in the boxes more often.
debbie // January 31, 2010 at 12:45 pm |
Enjoying the recipe folder, I save time trawling through recipe books. Could you also give tips on how to store or freeze veg. I’ve just finished my brussell sprouts as I managed to save some. I try to waste as little as possible through the year and still manage to have veg in freezer for the week after Christmas or when coming back from a hoilday, without having to go to the supermarket.
Steve Langman // February 3, 2010 at 6:28 pm |
Have been getting a vegetable box for many years now and enjoyed seeing how much of the food was produced in the uk. I would like to see the return of this information. It was taken off for more room for recipes, if customers need more recipes I suggest they buy your excellent book, the list also explained what some of the more unusual vegetables are. I hope others are in agreement.
riverford // February 4, 2010 at 10:25 am |
thanks for your thoughts on the newsletter. We did take off the box contents as customers were asking for more recipes and help in using up the boxes. However, we have kept the information about source of box contents on “this week’s boxes” on our website. You’ll notice through the winter months we have a Roots + Greens box which is sourced predominantly from our farm and local growers which not only gives it the lightest carbon footprint but also one of our best value boxes.
Garden Beet // February 4, 2010 at 8:47 pm |
i had never considered this important point – thanks for the info
Harriet // February 21, 2010 at 4:02 pm |
What happened to the bread options? the Rye and sourdough were delicious
riverford // February 22, 2010 at 10:30 am |
Freshly baked Town Mill bread is back for the South West – You might know that we stopped doing bread for a bit. That was so Town Mill could work out an old-fashioned solution to the problem of keeping bread fresh, without using science to artificially extend its life. And they have come up with an ingenious plan – removing a splash of olive oil and adding a dash more milk. This means they can use less yeast, making the bread lighter and keeping it fresh for longer.
Town Mill’s bread is made from scratch with no added preservatives, stabilisers or unnecessary additives. So you get extra fresh, great tasting bread, delivered to your door the same morning it’s baked. And now it lasts longer than ever.
We don’t yet deliver bread to Cornwall, Wales, South East England or London, but we hope to soon, working with regional bakeries that offer great quality and flavour. Watch this space.