Week 52+24 - Bed PC8

Week 52+7 - Bed PC8

Now that there is more sun and the weather i swarmer, the growth of the cover crop has increased. We will dig this growth into the soil about a month before we want to sow seeds in this bed, to allow the first phase of decomposition to take place.

Week 49 - Bed PC8

The growth of the green manure has come on quite a bit in the last two weeks.

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 40 - Bed PC8

A clean freshly dug and newly seeded bed.

Week 39 - Bed PC8

Cleared out potatoes, dug up the soil and sowed:

• Landsberger Mix

In the paths on the west side of the bed we sowed:

• White Clover

This will form a low growing carpet of cover crop that will fix nitrogen and tolerate a certain amount of walking on.

Week 39 - Bed PC8 Planting

Cleared out potatoes, dug up the soil, and then 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.

In the path on west side of the bed we sowed:

• White Clover - a low lying nitrogen fixing crop that is suitable for undersowing

This will form a low growing carpet of cover crop that will fix nitrogen and tolerate a certain amount of walking on.

Week 38 - Bed PC8

We finally got around to clearing this bed of vegetation, but there are still a some potatoes to be dug out. The ones that we dug today were still in good condition.
One thing that we noticed is that there were not any nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots of the beans and peas that we pulled up. This was the same in the other beds. This lack of extra nitrogen might explain why these crops did so poorly in this bed where they had to compete with the hungry potatoes.

Week 33 - Bed PC8

This bed is ready to be dug up, but there are still a few peas (bottom) and broad beans (top) to be harvested, so we will wait a few more weeks.

Some of the pea pods have matured and dried, producing seed ready to fall to the ground.

Week 31 - Bed PC8

The extremely wet conditions over the past month have really finished this bed off.

A few unhealthy looking broad bean plants are finally starting to produce some pods. It is interesting that it waited until the potatoes were finished before producing.

The potato plants have withered to almost nothing - quite possibly hit by blight while we were on holiday for 3 weeks.

This is a surprisingly decent harvest of potatoes from one of the plants, given the lack of fertility, poor bed preparation, the drought in April, the frost at the end of May, and the miserable summer weather. We had planted fewer potatoes in this bed than in others giving each plant more space which would have helped to increase the yield of each plant. The nitrogen fixed onto the roots of the peas and beans will have also helped.

Week 27 - Bed PC8

The mix of plants in this plot has not worked well this season. The drought conditions in April followed by the very late frost in May have caused problems. When preparing this bed we removed the sod instead of digging it in to the soil, and this removed much of the nutrients from the bed - and we did not add any compost, manure or other fertilisers. We also did not break up the lay of stones under topsoil, which likely has acted as a 'hard pan' which wold reduce the ability of the roots to penetrate deeper into the soil in search of nutrients and moisture. So the poor weather conditions were compounded by the less than ideal bed preparations.

The potatoes are still struggling and the broad beans are suffering (to the left of the photo), but a few peas plants are producing plump pods.

Week 25 - Bed PC8

Although the potatoes have been knocked back by the frost, the peas that had been crowded out earlier now have more space and light to grow.

The first of the peas from this bed!

Week 24 - Bed PC8

The potatoes have been hit by the frost a few weeks ago and although they will recover they will not produce as high a yield because of this set back.

The peas in flower with the first small pods showing in the background.

The broad beans are also in flower.

Week 18 - Bed PC8 Planting

We sowed some more seeds of the same variety of peas and broad beans as we had run out of seed when when we first planted this bed.

• Meteor Dwarf Peas (40 seeds) - an early hardy variety ideal for both autumn and spring sowing, grows to 35cm high
• Express Broad beans (12 seeds ) - a fast maturing longpod variety growing 60cm tall

Week 13 - Bed PC8 Planting

The top inch or two of sod was cut off of this bed and set aside to decompose into a loam for potting with next year. The soil was then dug to a roughly a spade's depth but we did not loosen the compact layer of stone under this layer. This would have taken quite a bit of work and we are interested in seeing how this will compare with the double dug beds.

In this bed we planted:

• Orla Potatoes (15 chitted sets) - a first early variety with creamy white oval tubers with light yellow flesh
• Meteor Dwarf Peas (30 seeds) - an early hardy variety ideal for both autumn and spring sowing, grows to 35cm high
• Express Broad beans (10 seeds ) - a fast maturing longpod variety growing 60cm tall

The potatoes, peas and broad beans were mixed together as a polycrop. This is an experimental bed to see if these plants will grow well together. The peas and the beans will fix nitrogen and the potatoes will provide some support for the climbing peas. We selected early varieties of crop.

The pea seeds were pre-sprouted, 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.

We ran out of broad bean seeds and will have to plant more later, and should sow some more peas as well.