Eagle eyed box customers will have noticed that you are missing some of the green vegetables that would normally be in your boxes by now.

We expect to come back after Christmas to produce that has been growing away quite happily since the summer. But this year we have a real lack of greens: kurly kale, cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli. We have cauliflowers struggling to reach the size of a cricket ball, spring greens running up to four weeks late and the sprouting broccoli showing no real sign of the beautiful purple florets.

The immediate reason is the exceptionally cold snap and in such cold periods many plants just close down and don’t grow.

The problem actually goes back to the terrible summer of 2008.

Many of these crops were planted then, and should have had a warm dry period to put their roots down and start their growth. Instead they went into wet, cold soil, where the nutrients were leached away by rain. They had no need to put roots down deep to find moisture, and the cold inhibited their initial growth.

So please bear with us, those of you who see these items on other markets please be aware that they may actually not be from Bedfordshire.