Week 13 - Bed PC8 Planting

The top inch or two of sod was cut off of this bed and set aside to decompose into a loam for potting with next year. The soil was then dug to a roughly a spade's depth but we did not loosen the compact layer of stone under this layer. This would have taken quite a bit of work and we are interested in seeing how this will compare with the double dug beds.

In this bed we planted:

• Orla Potatoes (15 chitted sets) - a first early variety with creamy white oval tubers with light yellow flesh
• Meteor Dwarf Peas (30 seeds) - an early hardy variety ideal for both autumn and spring sowing, grows to 35cm high
• Express Broad beans (10 seeds ) - a fast maturing longpod variety growing 60cm tall

The potatoes, peas and broad beans were mixed together as a polycrop. This is an experimental bed to see if these plants will grow well together. The peas and the beans will fix nitrogen and the potatoes will provide some support for the climbing peas. We selected early varieties of crop.

The pea seeds were pre-sprouted, which involved soaking seeds and allowing them to sprout indoors. This is useful in the early spring when the cold soil can prevent or slow germination. Unfortunately, the roots had grown too long (they should have been planted a few days earlier) which probably reduced any advantage.

We ran out of broad bean seeds and will have to plant more later, and should sow some more peas as well.