Week 52+24 - Bed EX8

Week 52+21 - Bed EX8

Week 52+7 - Bed EX8

The cover crop of grass continues to grow. It does not really matter if this is from the cover crop that we sowed a few months earlier, or from seeds within the soil, as they will both do the same job of preventing nutrients from leaching away in the heavy rains providing additional carbon to be dug into the soil later in the spring.

Week 49 - Bed EX8

We finally cleared out the remains of the peas and broad beans, and as with elsewhere in the plots, there were not any nitrogen fixing nodules. It seems that the specific beneficial bacteria that form these symbiotic nodules on the roots of the peas and beans is not present in the soil of this field. This would make sense given that peas and beans have not been grown in this field for decades.
The poor yield peas and beans is probably due to this lack of additional nitrogen. We will have to find a way of introducing these bacteria to the soil before we plant any more peas.

Week 40 - Bed EX8

The second growth of broad beans have reached harvesting size, and seem to have been unaffected by the strong frost that we had last week.

The pea plants show no frost damage, but the pods, especially the younger ones (left) have signs of frost damage. It will be interesting to see if they will still produce a crop.

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

Week 38 - Bed EX8 Planting

We dug up the remaining potatoes and prepared a seedbed and over the entire bed, including under the broad beans and peas, we broadcast sowed a 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.

The second growth of peas are filling out and we have harvested a very small but tasty crop.

Week 36 - Bed EX8

The second growth of the pea plants are starting to produce pods.

Week 35 - Bed EX8

We were going to clear out the broad bean and pea plants, but noticed that there are new shoots appearing at the base of many plants, so we cut off the old growth and left the younger parts of the plants to see what will happen.

The new growth at the base of the pea plants - the broad beans are similar.

There are several new shoots appearing at the base of this pea plant that we dug up. We were not able to locate any nitrogen fixing nodules on the pea roots - a common occurrence with the beans and peas in these plots.

Week 33 - Bed EX8

The peas in the foreground have weighed down their flimsy support sticks, and the broad beans have grown quite high and are in danger of blowing over.

week 31 - Bed EX8

This bed has really been affected by the last month of wet weather (and the neglect while we were on holiday). The crop of peas has trailed off to almost nothing.

The remaining broad beans are large but covered by a rust , the result of a fungal disease that is common in wet weather.

The potatoes have died right back, though it does not seem to have been caused by blight. Most of the potatoes in the are have been badly affected by the weather.

Despite the late frost and early end to the season, there is still a yield of potatoes. We dug up 3 plants and harvested what is shown in the photo - better than nothing, and very delicious. the rest of the potatoes we will leave int he ground until we are ready to eat them, or we need the bed for something else.

Week 27 - Bed EX8

The broad beans have filled out and are almost ready to harvest. The longer we wait, the bigger the beans will get, but if we harvest them earlier, they will be sweeter and more tender.

Week 25 - Bed EX8

The early potatoes still suffering from the late frost damage, but there is a substantial amount of new growth.

The beans are startign to form inside of the broad beans bods.

Some of these peas are healthy (top left) while others are not thriving (bottom right), but it is the less healthy looking plants that are producing peas first. It is fairly common for stressed plants to rush to produce seeds (in this case earlier peas) but what caused the stress to some of the plants and not others.

A small but delicious crop.

Week 24 - Bed EX8

9 weeks after the initial planting, the south end of this bed has grown enough to cover most of the soil, but the potatoes at the north end are still struggling, having been nocked back by a very late frost at the end of May.

The peas are starting to produce pods, one more week until they will be ready to harvest.

The lowest flower clusters on the broad beans have been replaced by a few small pods. There are fewer pods than expected, only one for every 6-10 flowers, which is a very poor rate of pollination. It is possible that there are not nearly enough bees around.

Week 18 - Bed EX8 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 more than half of the broad bean seeds with the same variety and surrounded the bed with a branches to keep the birds out.

Week 13 - Bed EX8 Planting

This bed was dug as a rough lazy-bed into which we planted:

• Meteor Dwarf Peas (2 short double rows) - an early hardy variety ideal for both autumn and spring sowing, grows to 35cm high
• Express Broad beans (4 short rows) - a fast maturing longpod variety growing 60cm tall
• Orla Potatoes (27 sets) - a first early variety with creamy white oval tubers with light yellow flesh

One row of the peas was sown using pre-sprouted seeds 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.