Week 16 - Bed PC4 Planting

This bed was prepared by removing the top layer of sod, digging out a trench of soil to a spade's depth, loosening up the hard pan a bit and removing some of the larger stones and replacing the soil. This is a lot more work than some of the earlier beds in this plot, but we wanted to make sure that the root vegetables could have more room to grow. A fine seedbed was prepared a wide range of seeds were scattered across the whole bed:

• Long Black Scorzonera - a heavy yielding, long root with white flesh and black skin
• Autumn King Carrot - a high yield popular maincrop variety with good flavour and storing
  
• Halblange Hamburg Parsley - a variety of parsley grown primarily for its thick, pointed half long parsnip-like roots
• White Gem Parsnip - wedge shaped root variety with smooth white skin
• Tetra Dill - a herb with feathery foliage and aniseed flavour

We also added a number of different lettuces:

• Marvel of Four Seasons Lettuce - red and green butterhead heirloom variety
  
• Aruba Lettuce - a very red, large headed looseleaf variety
• Salad Bowl Lettuce - cut and come again looseleaf lettuce, with long green leaves
  
• Roger Lettuce - red batavia variety
  
• Little Gem Lettuce - dwarf cos variety
  
• Till Lettuce - dense looseleaf variety with arrow shaped leaves
• Thirza Lettuce - a medium size green lettuce with well filled hearts, crops spring, summer, autumn
  
• Brun D'Hiver Lettuce - a heirloom variety dating from 1855, with compact, wrinkled green/red leaves
  
• Alvaro Lettuce - a crisphead variety to harvest from mid may to autumn
  

The seedbed was then lightly raked to cover the seeds and then onion sets were pressed into the bed at random:

• Centurion Onion (approx 30 sets) - early maturing round variety with brown skin suitable for medium term storage