GROWING
Growing is part of life at Lickety Ice, and you’ll often find us out on the allotment harvesting seasonal fruits and other ingredients for our lollies. Soft summer berries, raspberries, fresh mint, rhubarb, apples and pears all go into our seasonal specials. What we can’t grow, we source from local trusted suppliers.
Every season is an opportunity to trial new growing concepts and to implement successful practices from previous experiments. This year, we are expanding our growing area so we can produce even more fruit for our lollies in the future.
Our gardener Catherine Supple and Bee Keeper Steve Barrett play a huge part in our growing and composting cycle. Steve manages our eight hives and also grows rhubarb for us all season on his allotment less than a mile down the road.
-
CATHERINE SUPPLE
HEAD GARDENER & COMPOST MANAGER
Catherine, our gardener, grows fruit for us all season on our allotment and has been managing our composting project. We use NatureFlex packaging which is made of cellulose and completely, quickly home-compostable. Catherine feeds our compost bays slowly with the wrappers and lolly sticks in addition to green and brown waste to maintain the right balance of nutrients. Since autumn 2022 we have used this compost in our gardens to produce lovely fruit, which can then be freshly picked and put into our lollies.
-
STEVE BARRETT
BEE KEEPER & LOCAL FRUIT HERO
Steve Barrett, who is also head beekeeper for Adnams and Raymond Blanc, cares for our eight hives. He extracts the honey which goes into some of our seasonal special lollies. Steve is a member of the British beekeeping association and has been working with bees since 1968. He brings a lifetime of experience and also grows rhubarb all summer for us on his allotment, which is less than a mile down the road. In the summer of 2023 we harvested almost 130 kilos over 4 crops and Steve’s rhubarb is the key ingredient in our Rhubarb & Custard lollies.