Week 52+24 - Bed PC1

Week 52+21 - Bed PC1

Week 52+7 - Bed PC1

The garlic has grown well over the winter months, despite the frosts, wind and heavy rain.

Some of the young garlic plants have been pulled up by birds, but most of them have produced at least 2 leaves. The effect of the heavy rains on the surface of the soil is very visible. The hard rain drops break up the structure of the soil and flood the surface, which produces a hard capping of silt (there is very little clay in this soil) which cracks when dries. This cap will not prevent the garlic from growing but it does reduce the amount of rainwater that can enter the soil and will cause a certain amount of erosion from the beds into the paths. Careful cultivation to break up this cap will also cover the garlic bulbs, many of which are now standing proud of the surface.

Week 49 - Bed PC1

The garlic cloves planted in this bed are probably establishing the beginnings of the root system and will start to send up shoots in a few weeks.

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 40 - Bed PC1

The two nights of early frost that we had last week have put an end to any further growth in this bed, which is a shame because another month's growth would have allowed some of the fruit to mature.

A few small Ebisu pumpkins have grown, and they do not seem to have been affected by the frost. We will wait a few weeks to see if they mature at all.

The darker patch on largest of the Uchiki Squash shows that it has been damaged by the frost. Even if the fruit had matured it will not keep at all with frost damage and will likely start to rot. We will pick it in a few weeks to see what happens.

Week 38 - Bed PC1

The plants have mostly filled the bed, we keep moving vines back into the bed so that we can cut back the surrounding grass and eventually dig the adjacent bed.

There is one reasonable sized squash from the four plants - a Uchiki Kuri variety - though there is hardly any trace of the Becky pumpkin plant, so perhaps only three plants.

A few of the Ebisu squashes have grown a bit larger, but the one on the right has been damaged. It looks like something bit a hole in it.

Week 36 - Bed PC1

Another young Uchiki Kuri squash, but this one seems to be bigger than the other ones got to. Hopefully it is pollinated.

Week 33 - Bed PC1

A lot of growth in the last two weeks. We moved the vines which were starting to grow into the surrounding grass back into the bed, and pinched off the growing tip of a few to encourage a bushier growth.

More flowers ...
... and a few young fruit, but none of the older fruit seem to have been pollinated, and are rotting away. Some of the fruit seem to have vanished, perhaps eaten by whatever ate the sweetcorn.

Week 31 - Bed PC1

We came back to the garden after 3 weeks holiday and there is no sign of any of the sweetcorn plants. We have had very wet weather over the past month which would have stunted them but they should still be visible at least. I suspect something other than slugs have been eating them.

The prolonged wet weather has provided more thatn enough moisture, but the lack of any real sunshine or heat has not helped the squash in this bed. The Uchiki Kuri Squash (above) at the south end of the bed is smaller than the two Ebisu Pumpkins in the center, but is doing better than the Becky Pumpkin at the far end of the bed.

Sever small fruits have formed on the Uchiki Kuri Squash, but it is too early to tell if they have been pollinated.

This female flower on the Ebisu Pumpkin opened today and there are several male flowers around for pollination.

The flowers on the Becky Pumpkin are still buds and will need another week or so to develop.

Week 27 - Bed PC1

Three weeks after planting, the sweetcorn seedlings have sprouted and have developed 3 or 4 leaves, though some of the leaves are a bit tattered either from being eaten or some other physical damage.

Week 25 - Bed PC1

Two of the squash plants that had been transplanted into this bed last week. The top one is looking fairly healthy, but the bottom one was two weeks older when transplanted and the roots had started to wind around the base of the pot. Squash family plants hate their roots being disturbed.

Week 24 - Bed PC1 Planting

This bed was prepared as a single dug bed, but we placed an additional amount of chopped up sod at the bottom of the bed under the topsoil for extra fertility. We also added approximately 100L of reasonably decomposed horse manure to the bed. This manure had a lot of wood shavings that have yet to break down so we we only worked it lightly into the top few cm of soil. Once prepared we transplanted 4 squash and pumpkin plants:

• Red Uchiki Kuri Squash (1 five week old plant) - a medium size winter variety with brilliant orange, tear drop shape smooth flesh fruit with sweet nutty taste
• Ebisu Pumpkin (2 four week old plants) - a japanese variety producing green medium size fruit with deep orange flesh which tastes similar to a sweet potato
• Becky F1 Pumpkin (1 five week old plant) - a medium sized orange jack-o-lantern variety

In five stations spaced evenly across the bed we sowed clumps of:

• Golden Bantam Sweetcorn (8 seeds per station) - very good quality variety with a nice sweet flavour that grows to 180cm tall

We had planned to plant this bed with the "three sisters" which is a polycrop combining squash, corn and climbing beans, and will plant climbing french beans amongst the sweetcorn in a few weeks. We are a bit late planting this bed and it is questionable whether any of the crops will ripen before the first frost.


Two of the transplants, the lower image is of one of the Ebisu pumpkins which was slightly younger and less likely to be set back by the transplanting.