Week 52+24 - Bed EX7

Week 52+21 - Bed EX7

Week 52+7 - Bed EX7

The ryegrass cover crop continues to grow and will be dug int to ad fertility later in the spring. The north end of the bed is empty because the cover crop failed to sprout under the remains of the peas and broad beans.

Week 49 - Bed EX7

We finally pulled out the remains of the peas and broad beans at the far end of the bed and found that there were no nitrogen fixing nodules. This was the same with other plots and it seems that this does not have any of the bacteria species particular to the pea andbean family of plants. This absence would make sense, given that peas and beans probably have not been grown in this field for many decades. The lack of this extra source of nitrogen probably reduced the yield of the peas. We will have investigate how to inoculate the soil before the next sowing of peas and beans.

The ryegrass that we sowed as a cover crop is doing well, at least in the area that had been empty, but there is still no sign of clover or vetch.

Week 40 - Bed EX7

The ryegrass seeds have sprouted, but there is no sign of the clover or vetch yet.

Many of the pea pods have been damaged by the two nights of strong frost we had last week. the plants were unaffected, but it will be interesting to see if these pods produce any peas.

The second growth of the broad bean plants looks healthy, but there are not many pods. We are not sure if we should leave them in place for the winter, especially if there is no nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil. The plants offer some shelter, and will continue to forage for nutrients in the soil, but it might be better to let the compost crop take over. We will wait to see if the clover and vetch sprouts.

Week 38 - Bed EX7 Planting

We dug up the rest of the potatoes and prepared a seedbed.

The Sugar Snap Peas are producing pods ...

... as are the broad beans. Although the crop will be small, these plants should keep fixing additional nitrogen into the soil (if there is any of the particular bacterial present in the soil), so we are planning to leave them in place over winter.

In among the peas and broad beans, as well as over the new seedbed where the potatoes had been taken out we broadcast an overwintering green manure mix containing:

• Italian Ryegrass - a fast growing hardy grasing grass which will produce a lot of biomass
• Crimson Clover - a quick growing, vigourous annual which fixes nitrogen and will attracts bees in the spring
• Winter Vetch - a hardy nitrogen fixing forage plant

This combination of green manures is know as the "Landsberger Mix" and is promoted as the ideal overwintering composting crop, producing a lot of organic material, adding nitrogen to the soil and keeping soil and nutrients from washing away with the winter rains, and preparing the soil for next season. The crop will be dug into the soil next spring to compost in place.

Week 36 - Bed EX7

The secondary broad bean shoots are producing a lot of flowers.

Week 35 - Bed EX7

We cleared out much of the bed this week.

The potatoes have died right back, but we will leave the tubers in the ground until we need them.

We started to pull up some of the broad bean plants, but noticed young flowering shoots at the base so we trimmed them off instead to see if they would produce a second crop of beans.

Many of the broad beans had this secondary growth. This was the same with some of the peas and we left the young shoots in the ground to see what will happen.

We were not able to locate any nodules containing the nitrogen fixing bacteria on the roots of these broad beans. It is possible that the soil does not contain this bacteria and we may need coat the next batch of seed with the bacteria to introduce it. This lack of extra nitrogen may be part of the reason for the poor yield of beans as the plants could not take advantage of the extra boost of nitrogen.

The stems of the beans had grown over 120cm tall and will provide a lot of material for the compost.

Week 33 - Bed EX7

The plants in this bed are reaching the end of their growth.

The potato plants continue to die back. Some of the leaves have holes made by some creature, and a few of the leaves seem to have what could be blight, but this has not spread over the past few weeks.

Week 31 - Bed EX7

After a month of wet weather and neglect this bed has changed substantially.

The broad beans have shot up in height ...

... and are some of the pods are ready for harvest - the beans are delicious at this size. There are not as many pods as expected, this might have something to do with the lack of bees and other pollinators, and/or the wet weather.

The potatoes are starting to die back. I would have expected them to still be growing strongly, but many of the potatoes seem to have suffered this year.

This is the harvest of potatoes from one plant.

Many peas should have been picked a week ago, and the plants have bent the support sticks over again, and some of the peas have been eaten by slugs. We will have to use much stronger support next time.

Week 27 - Bed EX7

A good crop of Sugar Snap Peas which will be ready to harvest in a week or two. The sticks that we had used to support the peas are not strong enough, and the pea plants have been leaning over onto the ground. We inserted some stronger sticks to help support the weight.

Week 25 - Bed EX7

Healthy Maris Peer potatoes have grown out of the minor frost damage.

Sugar snap peas can be eaten now as mangetout while the seeds are immature but are better when the pod is plump and fat.

Lots of flowers on these broadbeans but no pods have set yet.

Week 24 - Bed EX7

9 weeks after sowing, this bed is growing well, especially the potatoes, which were only slightly affected by the frost that we had at the end of May.

Week 18 - Bed EX7 Planting

The broad beans that were sown in this bed have sprouted, but the rooks (large crow) have eaten quite a number of the seeds by carefully tugging on the emerging leaves until the seed comes out of the ground. They seem to love the plump seed and leave the rest of the plant on the ground as a sign of their ingenuity! So we resowed about half of the broad bean seeds with the same variety.

Week 15 - Bed EX7 Planting

We cultivated this bed as a fairly rough lazy-bed and planted:

• Maris Peer Potato (south 1/2 of bed) - a second early (or early maincrop) variety with cream skin and creamy yellow floury flesh
• Hangdown Green Broad Bean (1/2 long double row) - a vigorous early longpod variety
• Ambrosia Sugar Snap Peas (1/2 long double row) - early fairly tall growing, sweet variety with edible parchment free pod