We grow one wonderful raspberry variety: the Driscoll’s Maravilla. This variety has the perfect combination of sweetness, flavour, firmness and yield to make it our favourite and we are sure that no others are as good!
We use glasshouses for the beginning and end of the season, with field-grown floricane, long cane, and primocane production techniques to supply from April until November.
We produce the very best tasting strawberries on the market, growing varieties such as Malling Centenery and Prize and having access to the amazingly flavoursome Driscoll’s varieties: Lusa and Amesti. Driscoll’s are always releasing new and improved varieties and Honey Tye always selects the best.
We are able to produce for a really long season (from March until December) by using a combination of techniques. We get the maximum earliness and lateness through our heated glasshouses, which use woodchip from our own local and sustainable wood sources to give a low carbon source of heat.
We grow eight delicious blueberry varieties at Honey Tye; Duke, Sweet Jane, Barbara Anne, Jolene, Cecilia, Delia, Last Call, Sekoya Crunch and Peachy Blue, which are harvested from the second week of June to mid-September. The individual varieties we grow, as well as the tunnels and locations we use, provide us with an extended availability of tasty blueberries!
Most of our blueberries are grown in pots under polythene tunnels, with precision irrigation systems delivering a bespoke nutritional program to each pot. However, we still grow an extensive area of blueberries in the soil outside.
We have recently invested in two state-of-the-art pneumatic harvesters which use precision air jets to harvest the fruit at optimum ripeness, and place it into trays for further grading at the packhouse. This allows us to harvest greater volumes of fruit at optimum ripeness and place it in cold store more rapidly, so you can enjoy the best quality fruit.
Honey Tye makes the best use of our early sites and light land and our team work extremely hard to get British asparagus at the very start of the home-grown season.
We start in March and go right through to the traditional end of the season on the longest day. We grow the biggest, nuttiest and juiciest varieties such as Guynilim and Mondeo.
Polstead in Suffolk, where around half of our 19 hectares of cherries are grown, was once renowned for its cherries and gave its name to the Polstead Black variety. At Honey Tye we have chosen to grow only the sweetest cherry varieties (Kordia, Karina, and Penny) that are well-suited for the British climate. Right at the end of the season, we also have Regina.
Protected with insect nets and rain covers and grown on a northern aspect, we ensure these go really late in order to be some of the latest in the world (other than Canada and Scotland). On the other end of the scale, we grow sour Morello cherries for sale to culinary customers in one of the last and oldest commercial Morello cherry orchards in the UK.
To kick the season off, get our minds on the task, and give the land a rest, we produce early Rhubarb at the very beginning of the season.
We choose the fantastically flavoured and well-coloured variety, Timperly Early, to get our season started in February and March.
Apples are where it all started for Honey Tye and, as such, we have an extensive variety on offer. With over 80 years of experience, we grow over 40 types of apple and offer the best-flavoured varieties. From Magic Star to Fuji, Daliclass and Delbar Estival, as well as the seasonal favourites that you would expect (Cox, Gala, Braeburn, Golden Delicious, Bramley, Windsor).
We also keep rare ones in production over our four hectares of heritage orchard (as well as a unique habitat) and breathe new life into some favourite traditional varieties like Charles Ross, Laxton Superb, Cox, Discovery, Worcester, and Russet, by growing them using state-of-the-art techniques.