Week 15 - Bed 8 Planting

photo by Eoin Campbell

This bed was prepared a few weeks earlier, with early peas planted at the south end of the bed. This photo is of one of the peas seedlings that we dug up. Only the green leaves and section of the stem was above ground, only 2-3 cm high. The white stem is about 2.5cm long, and below the seed the root stretched almost 15 cm below ground, all of this growth in only 3 weeks, from a dry seed (not pre-soaked or sprouted).

We divided the remainder of the bed into four roughly sections, each about 20% of the bed, and planted beetroot and chards (leaf beat or silverbeet):

• Swiss Chard - dark green leaves with broad white ribs (also known as silverbeet or leaf beet)
• Rhubarb Chard - rich ruby-red leaf stalks and dark green/purple foliage
• Barbietola di Chioggia Beetroot - a mild-flavoured italian, pink skin variety with white flesh and pink rings
• Storuman Beetroot - fast growing globe beetroot, both summer and main-crop
  

The chards and the pink beetroot were planted on a equally spaced grid, and the red beetroot were sown by scattering a lot of seeds and covering them with a fine layer of soil.