On Monday the 17th of April the full team from the Seed Co-Operative attended the first event of the Organic Growers Alliance ‘on the farm’ series with a tour of Delfland Nurseries in Cambridgeshire.
Established in 1979 and run by owners Jill Vaughan and John Overvoorde, Delfland Nurseries has positioned itself as the UK’s largest supplier of organic plug plants with 33 million plants leaving the glasshouses each year. A wide range of vegetable and salad plants are propagated for customers all over the UK ranging in size from large companies supplying supermarkets to small businesses supplying local farmers’ markets and vegetable box schemes. 73% is grown to Organic /Soil Association Standards.
There was an impressive group of 34 attendees on the tour enthusiastic to see the inner workings of such a successful operation. All things seed propagation and a journey through each department from seed to door was covered during an extensive 3 hour-long tour and Q&A with expert seed propagators Jill and John.
The tour was a great look in behind the glass doors of Delfland, from the seed sowing machinery capable of filling thousands of trays a day, to the delicate and intricate work of human hands in the grafting department. The vast glass houses of 3.1 hectares were truly a sight to behold and felt more like looking out over a field. It was a mind-expanding experience to see how seedlings can be raised in their quantities as well as they’re quality to meet large scale food production to organic standards.
As the Seed Co-Operative prepare to launch our first plug plant range, we were keen to learn from Delfland. Our team were particularly inspired by a unique cutting and seed plug holder which Delfland are using called ‘growcoon’, designed to support and protect the root ball of a young plant in the early stages of its growth. We would really like to use these for our own plug plants.
We really enjoyed our tour of Delfland and want to thank the OGA for making events like these possible. Learning from grower to grower, we can all come away feeling inspired and connected to each other. It was great to meet some of our customers too! We look forward to seeing where the ‘on the farm’ series goes next and the opportunity to meet more inspiring organic growers in the UK.
For more information visit delfland.co.uk
Written by: Deanna Coult (Assistant Grower / BDAC Apprentice, Seed Co-Operative)
Photography by: Louise Smith (Sales, Distribution and Plug Plant Lead, Seed Co-operative)