Week 47 - Bed PC8

There has not been a lot of growth after 8 weeks, and most of it seems to be weeds. The grass has sprouted, but there is no sign of the vetch and the clover in the bed.

Week 47 - Bed PC7

Eight weeks after sowing the grass has sprouted, and the clover in the paths is growing as well, but there is no sign of the vetch and clover that was planted as part of the Landsberger mix.

Week 47 - Bed PC6

Only the few brassicas are worth keeping in this bed, everything else is not worth keeping around.

Week 47 - Bed PC5

Some of the plants have had a late season growth spurt, but none of us want to harvest anything out of the bed after the horrible beetroot!

Week 47 - Bed PC4

The few dill plants have gone to seed and the carrots are struggling, but the parsnip seems to be growing well and are now dominating the bed.

Week 47 - Bed PC3

The leeks have grown quite a bit in the nine weeks since they were transplanted, but we did not plant them early enough for a big crop.

Week 47 - Bed PC2 Planting

We finished digging the bed (one spade depth) and incorporated 70L of well rotted horse manure. Into the resultant raised bed we planted a scattered mix of:

• Red Onion Sets - overwintering bulb onion (not sure which variety).
• Senshyu Onion Set - a Japanese overwintering variety, semi flat shaped with yellow/brown skins which mature in late June.

We ran out of sets, but most of the southern 2/3rds off the plot is covered.

Week 47 - Bed PC1 Planting

We cultivted this bed, removing quite a bit of stone from the lower level, but have not yet added any additional fertility. We will need to top dress this bed in the spring. Into the prepared bed we planted:

• Messidrome Garlic - a large overwintering garlic variety, with regular bulbs that are pink or pink marked.

Week 47 - Bed DD8

Many of the greens in this bed have grown very well, especially the rocket and mizzuna which have filled the one section. the corn salad failed to sprout, and some of the chard plants are missing - though I think that this might be due to careless weeding.

Week 47 - Bed DD7

There is some new growth on some of the pea plants, but most of the pods have been damaged by frost. The clover has sprouted but has not grown much. We sowed this cover crop too late in the season.

Week 47 - Bed DD5

The brassicas in this bed continue to grow and develop and we have started to harvest some of the kale leaves in the foreground.

The Brussels Sprout plants have not grown very large but the sprouts have started to form and will be ready to start harvesting in a few weeks.

Week 47 - Bed DD4

With the exception of a few scattered seedlings, nothing has grown in this bed (or else everything that sprouted has been eaten). This is possibly due to the cool conditions, or the low light levels under the fleece that covered the bed for a few weeks. A polytunnel might have helped. We will likely resow this bed with some overwintering plants.

Week 47 - Bed DD3

We pulled out the overgrown borage plants a few weeks ago, and the overshadowing effect on bed is clearly visible. The leeks in the centre of the bed are significantly smaller and are a much lighter colour.

Week 47 - Bed DD1

The bed is still empty waiting to be double dug.

Week 47 - Bed EX6

The caterpillar season has ended! Most of the brassicas seem relatively unaffected, but a few are very stunted.

The Gortahork Winter Cabbage is starting to form a head. This should get quite large, judging by the size of the plant, and will be ready to harvest later in the winter.

Week 47 - Bed EX4

As the weather is getting colder, we decided to cover this bed with a fleece to create warmer conditions for germination and to protect the seedlings from the strong winds and frost in this exposed plot.

Week 47 - Bed EX3

The parsnip leaves are starting to droop, allowing the leeks to poke through to full sun again.

Week 47 - Bed EX1

The plant on this bed were cleared a few weeks ago and the grass that had grown around the edges was dug up and piled on top. The two big stones were dug out of the adjacent bed EX2 when it was double dug. There is a lot of stones in this field (most of them much smaller than these) that form a dense layer about 25-30 below the surface.

Week 46 - Bed EX2 Planting

We cleared all of the dying plants off of this bed to prepare it for planting overwintering onions and garlic.
This bed was originally dug less than 6 months ago as a rough lazy bed by turning over the sod and loosing up the surface without adding any additional fertility. A very quick method of starting a garden, but not the best for the first planting. This time double dug this bed and removed a number of large stones and many smaller ones that had formed a hard pan about 25cm below the surface. This would have prevented the roots from easily reaching deep in the soil and restricted the availability of nutrients and water, reducing the yield and possibly stressing the plant during droughts. The original sod was mostly decomposed, but remnants of the roots still remained.
We mixed in approximately 60L of well rotted horse manure and created a relatively smooth seedbed into which we sowed one long row each of:

• Messidrome Garlic - a large overwintering garlic variety, with regular bulbs that are pink or pink marked.
• Red Onion Sets - overwintering bulb onion (not sure which variety).
• Senshyu Onion Set - a Japanese overwintering variety, semi flat shaped with yellow/brown skins which mature in late June.

Week 45 - Bed DD2 Planting

We double dug the bed and added 100L of well rotted horse manure to the lower level of the bed. This will help to build up fertility through the full depth of the bed, but this bed should be top dressed with more in the spring. Into this bed we planted:

• Messidrome Garlic (22 rows of 6 cloves = 132 cloves) - a large overwintering garlic variety, with regular bulbs that are pink or pink marked.
  

Week 45 - Bed EX4 Planting

Nine weeks after sowing the winter crop of carrots, we have given up on them. We raked the bed, removing the few straggling carrots and weeds and prepared two long trenches into which we sowed:

• Douce Provence Pea (.5 long double row) - hardy round seeded traditional French pea, can sow Oct/Nov for overwinter crop, excellent crop of tender podding peas on plants 1M high
  
• Meteor Dwarf Pea (1.5 long double rows) - an early hardy variety ideal for both autumn and spring sowing, grows to 35cm high

Before covering the seeds we added soil from another garden where peas had been grown this past year, in an attempt to inoculate the soil with nitrogen fixing bacteria. Both of these pea varieties are hardy and can can be sown in the autumn for harvesting earlier in the spring. The site might be too harsh for these peas but it is worth the experiment, and it will enable the inoculation of the soil with the nitrogen fixing bacteria.