Storing the harvest
Fridges were few and far between and whilst fresh vegetables were needed through the winter, we had to adapt a way of enabling the harvest to last as long as possible.
In the garden a clamp would have been made to store all the root crops. This is a large mound of vegetables, usually in order of cropping, covered with straw and then topped with soil to protect from the frost. An open, vented top would have been left to enable the vegetables to breath.
Today the crops are harvested for use in our Restaurant, where many of the dishes include an element from the gardens. Any extra crops are bagged up for sale at the Upton Store, so you can take a piece of Upton home for dinner.
Whilst in the kitchen, jars of pickles and sometimes jams would have been made to help to preserve the harvest. Take a look in the cupboards in wartime kitchen to see what we’ve been pickling this month.
Conservation work is at the heart of what we do
To enable us to conserve this delicate garden we need to be able to manage the greater numbers of people visiting in our twelve month opening period, which can be very challenging at times. Part of that management scheme which has been carefully thought through is to rotate the garden areas as they come into flower. For example, throughout the winter and into early spring we enable visitors to follow the spring bulbs. Whilst walking on the hard pathways other areas can be be viewed from a distance to show of the structure of the planting. This will be followed by the first early herbaceous border coming into flower and other areas will open as the year goes on. This enables us to manage foot fall on the mown grass pathways and work on the borders for the following season.