July is almost over

It's a cool, breezy, overcast and wet day here in Coigach - I am having to constantly remind myself that it is officially summer! During the long spells of hard frost and snow earlier in the year I foolishly believed predictions of a good summer - ah well won't make that mistake again. On a positive note it means our water butts are not getting a chance to empty!

This has been a busy month for Alison, Di and I with the growing at the Garden, visitors, mail order, general day to day running of the business, various meetings and for Alison and I we were catering for guests of Norwestseakayaking who were staying locally. I had time off for my eldest son's graduation from Strathclyde University - it was definately one of the proudest moments I have experienced as a mum!

The Garden
Our Keder growing house is now in full production. We've had a great crop of strawberries from the hydroponics system at roof level and we are just about to start picking courgettes from plants in the raised beds. The recently installed two floor-level hydroponics systems, one for tomatoes and the other for cucumbers are doing really well. Each of these is supplied by its own tank, sunk into a sump in the floor at the lower end of the growing house - thanks again to Allan and Christie for their hard work. Allan has also finished putting in some water storage tanks at roof level which greatly increases the amount of rainwater we can store. These also provide a drip feed system for the raised beds which reduces the amount of time spent watering them.

All of the raised beds look fantastic but the bean bed is definately the most eyecatching - Di recycled some of the drying frames from the Eagle of the Ninth to use as supports for the beans.


Fresh Produce
The outdoor garden continues to thrive and Di has been harvesting produce from it - the peas are so tasty, I even had to buy them from Achiltibuie Stores when I saw them! The demand for our salad bags continues to increase and the shops are taking as much fresh produce as we are able to give them. We supply decorative leaves to the Summer Isles Hotel and world famous Michelin starred chef Albert Roux was another of their guests to be served them.

Flora and Fauna
Outside, we've been delighted to discover how many different wild flowers grow on the croft, including common orchids, yellow rattle, eyebright, marsh cinquefoil and red clover. We've heard a number of different birds, amongst them willow warbler, grasshopper warbler (we think) and twite. There are still stoats on the croft which is good news in our bid to keep rabbits out. Our older domestic geese have taken up summer residence at Alison's and the flock of domestic geese that Di has introduced are definately thriving on the croft.

Visiting
We're so pleased that many of you have been able to visit us this year. Our visitors all comment on how much we've managed to do since the Keder house was put up at the end of 2008 and are very interested to see the plans for our visitor centre which are now on display. We hope to have a decision soon from our Planning Officer, when we will be better able to plan the building programme.

The growing house is now open from 12pm - 5pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons until the end of September. I enlisted the help of my youngest to assemble some shelves so we have created more of a shop/display area within the growing house.

We have now introduced "You buy - we ship!" at the growing house as visitors have told us they have limited space to carry goods home. Visitors place an order at the growing house and we send it out at a reduced delivery rate (exclusive to personal customers at the growing house) and purchases will be sent to arrive on the customer's preferred delivery date.

Bye from Coigach

Julie

June at The Garden

Here we are in the middle of June and we have been experiencing quite a variety of weather - some of the evenings have been so cold that I have had to turn the central heating on! Others have been so warm - if we are confused how must all the plants feel?

As always we are all kept extremely busy but I am delighted to report that we finally got our new colour catalogue and it has been well received. We wanted it to be more than just a product catalogue and people have enjoyed the looking at the beautiful photos which we included (here's hoping it helps increase visitors to the area), the inclusion of useful tips and information has been appreciated - we even included a recipe!

Online shop/mail order
With The Garden placing greater demands on Di's time I have now taken on the challenge of being responsible for this area of the business. I have settled into this new role and continue to follow on from Di who worked hard to ensure customers orders were delivered as quickly as possible. I do enjoy seeing the whole order through - from taking the initial order, packing it and handing it over to the Ali the Post or Dave from AJG Parcels.

The Garden
Phew - where to start! We now have 5 raised beds - Di planted bed 5 with beans and flowers and yesterday Alison planted up bed 4 with courgettes, pumpkins and squashes.
Bed 1 is filled with early varieties of potatoes including Nadine, Pentland Javellin, Wilja and Foremost. I have to say I am looking forward to tasting them!
Beds 2 & 3 have assorted planting with lots of salad leaves, spring greens, flowers and herbs. Will put some photos onto into our Gallery.

The vegetable garden outside has been laid out in 4 quarters - one area dedicated to 13 rows of Arran Victory tatties (they are so delicious!), one area has brassicas, another is filled with root vegetables and the final one is the nursery for our ornamental shrubs. The fruit cage has some raspberries planted but such has been the demands on time that we will concentrate on it over the winter.

Fresh produce
The demand for our bags of mixed salad leaves have grown this year (sorry no pun intended). We are supplying fresh produce to Achiltibuie Stores, The Arch Inn (Ullapool),Piping School Cafe, Polbain Stores, Summer Isles Foods, Summer Isles Hotel, Tanera Mhor and people popping into The Garden. We are even getting email requests from people coming to stay in Coigach to have salad ready for them to pick up on their arrival! I have to say that when I was down at The Garden yesterday I had to excerise great self control and not eat any of the strawberries - the smell alone...

All this demand has meant an increase in growing systems. Allan and Christie have built a sunken area for storing the supply tanks for our tomato and cucumber systems. This will give us the capacity to grow in excess of 100 plants in our pyramid pots which will be used with our fibreglass channels.

The new high systems are a step closer - the supports have been concreted in along the middle of the growing house and when time allows the system will be completed.

Wildlife
We are delighted that stoats have taken up residence, in an old rabbit burrow, on the croft and there now seems to be no sign of rabbits. The rabbits have caused a lot of damage over the last year or so and fingers crossed that all the new rabbit netting prevents anymore returning.

Lots of birds have been seen on the croft and last week Marius and Amelia have been joined by 17 more geese.

Visitor centre
We are hoping to hear from the planning office soon and we that it won't be too long before we can start building.

On a personal note I set myself the challenge of taking part in a charity walk in Inverness to raise money for cancer charities in the Highlands. A team of 6 from Coigach - Alice, Collette, Heather, Karen, Linda, myself and my friend Deirdre from Inverness all set out at 10pm on the 5th June, in the pouring rain to walk 13 miles, and had a great time. With all the donations we received we have raised almost £1000! I am thinking of the next challenge but in the meantime will keep walking!

Bye from a not so warm Coigach.

Julie

April news from The Garden

Last time I wrote I was stuck at home due to snow and as I write this I wonder if I should put my sunglasses on! The weather has been fantastic since the end of last week and has made outdoor gardening a pleasure. Unfortunately I did hear snow was due at the weekend but I will wait and see...

March and April have been rather hectic here - Di and Allan worked hard to get the growing house ready for opening to visitors at Easter. Stuart was enlisted to help Allan build the 5th raised bed and Di hasn't made her final decision on whether it will be used for flowers or courgettes.

The hydroponic systems are up and running and producing lots of salads. As well as supplying Achiltibuie Stores, Polbain Stores, our local Michellin star restaurant at Summer Isles Hotel with our produce we are now delighted to be supplying the Arch Inn Restaurant, in Ullapool. We will also be providing fresh produce for the cafe on Tanera Mhor, one of the Summer Isles.

With thanks to Peter and Marilyn, our vegetable garden now has rabbit netting on it, so hopefully this season's crops will be safe!

Alison has taken up an area within the vegetable garden as a nursery for our shrubs until such times as we can layout our ornamental garden. Unfortunately quite a few of the shrubs have been victim to the harsh winter we experienced.

In March, Alison and I travelled down to Argyll to attend a seminar hosted by the Moidart Trust, who had given us funding to establish an outdoor garden. There was such a diversity of people there who have businesses in remote locations - some more remote than ours!

In my last post I mentioned our new colour catalogue - great news, we hope to sign it off at the beginning of next week. Although we had quite a few product photos we needed to take more, thanks to Peter for helping out! As we hadn't had a get together over dinner for a long time I decided to host the meal. No problems there -until we had problems with our gas hob and it was disconnected! Having lived on the west coast for almost 25 years I was not going to be beaten so my double oven was put to the test - even for making gravy! It had been our intention to use some of the photos in our catalogue but we were all too busy eating to remember to take any! Peter did manage one of Di though.

With the country enjoying better weather people are now getting growing so we have been busy with mail order. Our local postie and delivery driver are kept busy as well!

Still no further on with our new building - hopefully it won't be much longer before we receive the consents. I think a wee celebration will be in order when we get the digger on site!

Bye from a sunny Coigach.

Julie

March has arrived

Who would have thought that there was any more snow left to fall in the highlands? After a few beautiful days snow has returned to Coigach and for the second time in a week I am working from home.

Regardless of the snow and frozen ground Di has been busy preparing for the 2010 growing season. By the way she has fully recovered from her October "break" and her wrist is becoming stronger and stronger. Seed catalogues have been studied and orders have been placed to grow old favourites and new varieties. We have sourced lots of manure from a local crofter so after quite a few trips to his croft Di has been digging it into the vegetable garden as she prepares it for planting.

With the funding we received from the Moidart Trust we were able to have our vegetable garden fenced and a fruit cage added. Iain and Christie have made a great job of this and once delivered, we will be able to attach the windbreak netting to finish it off.

Our fruit orchard is being expanded with the addition of more apple trees and damsons - unfortunately the weather has meant we have had to delay planting them.

Last week saw the return of geese to the Garden. After wintering in Blair, Marius has returned to his summer residence with a new partner named Lavinia. They are geting used to their new surroundings and being visited by Lucky and Kai, Di's puppies.

Allan has been busy with all the consents required for our new visitor centre and once these have been received work will commence on the new build. The design is fantastic and we are really looking forward to seeing the "real thing".

Developing the interior of the growing house continues - Di and Allan have been busy and have built a 4th raised bed and will make one more. Alison, Di and I have made a planting plan for them and will expand on the range of produce we grew in 2009.

The hydroponic systems are to be extended with further high systems and more at ground level. We are so grateful to Allan for his involvement in the design, planning and installation of all these systems as it's not like a conventional growing house where there is mains electricity and water as are dependent of renewable energy and rain water harvesting.

So lots going on along at the Garden but back in the office Alison and I have been doing all our usual day to day work PLUS working on our new A5 catalogue. Late in January we had a meeting with Jonathan Scott, our designer, about the concept and layout of the catalogue. We thought there was a lot of work involved with our website but this... The beauty of the web is that we have unlimited space for text but with such versatile products as ours, how can you fit all that info into a small text space? Anyway the good news is that we are getting close to having a catalogue we are happy with and once it goes to print we will let people know so they can request a catalogue.

We have been working with our friends at Kitchen Garden magazine and there will be some of our kits included in their Reader Giveaways in the April issue.

From Easter onwards we will be opening our gate to the Garden and visitors are welcome to come along and see how we are getting on. Full details of this will appear on the website.

Bye from a snowy Inverpolly

Julie

Press Release

Tourism in the North-West Highlands has been given a boost this week with the awarding of £66000 to The Achiltibuie Garden to help build its new visitor centre in Achiltibuie, Wester Ross. The award has been made by the Scottish Government as part of the latest round of funding from the Rural Priorities scheme within the Scottish Rural Development Programme. The new single-storey timber building, designed by local architect Allan Graham, includes a café and shop and will provide a much-needed boost to tourism in this remote area when it opens later this year, as well as safeguarding three existing jobs and creating several more over the next few years. Julie Edwards, marketing director of the business said: ‘We’re delighted to have been awarded this grant. The economy of Achiltibuie, Coigach and the Ullapool area depends very much on attracting tourists and our new visitor centre will make a significant contribution to this. We are also very grateful for all the help and support given to us by our local community and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their messages of congratulation.’

The building is part of a larger project which started in 2008 with the construction of a custom-made Keder greenhouse. This is powered using micro-renewables and includes a rainwater collection system to provide water for a range of plants grown in both hydroponic and soil-based systems. The new building will also use rainwater harvesting and wind-generated electricity and will feature a range of measures aimed at contributing to the company’s ethos of minimising its environmental impact as much as possible.

Other rural businesses will also benefit from this award as local materials will be used in its construction, including straw bale insulation, and the work will be carried out by local tradesmen. An application for detailed planning consent has recently been submitted to Highland Council and it is hoped that construction can begin as soon as all the necessary consents have been obtained.

Background notes:
The Achiltibuie Garden is based in Achiltibuie, Wester Ross, part of the North-West Highlands Geopark. There are several strands to the business which at the moment concentrates on its mail order element, supplying a range of hydroponics growing kits. These range from those suitable for growing herbs on a windowsill to custom-designed systems for domestic greenhouses. There is a loyal and well-established customer base from when the business of The Achiltibuie Hydroponicum was taken over in early 2007 by three of its employees: Julie Edwards, Alison Graham and Diana Wilding. They then chose the name The Achiltibuie Garden to reflect a wider range of activities from those carried out by the old Hydroponicum. In addition to the mail order, The Achiltibuie Garden grows and sells a range of fresh produce and is currently developing outdoor growing spaces on its site in Achiltibuie. The visitor centre is the next stage in the company’s development and it is hoped that it will be ready to welcome visitors later this year.