We harvested all of the carrots from this bed and will remove the leeks, and in a few weeks we will plant some overwintering broad beans in the empty spaces.
The carrots are delicious!
The parsnip foliage from above - still growing strong.
A healthy bunch of parsley, that will form part of a pasta dinner tonight.
The carrot seedlings have just emerged, it will be interesting to see if they can grow to a harvestable size in the next few months under the polytunnel.
The same goes for the beetroot seedlings.
The one remaining calabrese plant continues to send out flowers, so we have decided to delay pullng it out.
The kale seeds have sprouted, but there is a curious bare circle in the middle of the patch! It looks as though the topsoil and seeds were brushed away, perhaps by a cat playing in the freshly tilled soil.
The centre of each cabbage has a different shape and texture, but each is beautiful, especially the savoy cabbage above with water from an earlier rain shower still caught in the leaf ridges.
The Italian ryegrass has sprouted and is growing quickly, and there are a few vetch seedlings (centre-right), but there is no sign of the crimson clover yet.
The peas plants continue to turn brown, but the tops are still producing young peas.
This is the harvest from this week, not enough for dinner, and despite the mold most of these pods contain delicately sweet peas that are delicious raw, and best eaten right in the garden!
The frost that hit much of the country this past week did not affect this back garden - one of the benefits of growing food in the city. If it had, everything in this bed would have been killed.
There are very few beans, and we are leaving a few to grow to produce seed.
A fine crop of runner beans for this week.
The Genovese Courgette plant is still small but ...
... each week produces a few small courgettes.
The two remaining courgette plants in this bed continue to produce, but very slowly.
A few small but tender courgettes are harvested from the relatively small Genovese Courgette plant each week.
The Nero di Milano Courgette is looking a bit healthier and the young fruit are less mottled that they have been in the past few weeks.
The garden is unusually empty for this time of year. The potatoes finished early, the beans are sparse, the squash plants have been removed, and we have had a number of failures, all of which has left a lot of empty soil. Bed 5 was planted with winter greens a few weeks ago and a green manure was broadcast over beds 6, 7 and 10. Last week the empty part of bed 11 was planted with a winter crop of carrots and beetroot, which will be covered with a polytunnel. This week we sowed clover as a undercrop in beds 1, 3, 8 + 9, which will hopefully establish under the current plants and will continue to grow after they are harvested. In the spring, all of the green manures will be dug into the soil to add fertility for the plants next year. If things go well, all of the beds will have either an edible or a composting crop growing in them over the winter, and in some cases both.
We continue to munch away at the carrots - not sure if any will make it into storage - but the parsnip and leeks will not be harvested for another few months. There is empty space at the south end of the bed (bottom of photo) that we should plant something in, perhaps bread beans.
By carefully pulling away the soil around the base of the parsnip, we can see that the root has swolen to a reasonable size and will continue to grow until the cold of winter sets in. We will wait to harvest any until after a few frosts, as this will make the roots sweeter!
We will probably remove the leeks soon, as they will never reach a reasonable size, and replace them with overwintering broad beans. the other option is to sow broad bean seeds in between or beside the leeks, but we would have to be careful not to damage the seedlings when the leeks are finally removed.
The carrots and beetroot have not sprouted in this bed yet.
The parsley is getting big and can be harvested now, but it will keep throughout the winter under a the protection of the mini-polytunnel.
Most of the plants in this bed are doing well, but there are a few stunted plants, including the calabrese flowering in the foreground that could be removed. This could leave a bit of space to plant something else.
Over the entire bed, under all of these plants, we sowed:
Three reasonable sized sprouting broccoli plants.
Two small Brussel sprout plants.
Three Pentland Brig Kale plants. This variety can grow quite big, but in the limited space, poor fertility and overshadowing of this back garden, we cannot expect too much.
Some of the cabbages in this bed are doing well, but there are a few stunted plants, which could be removed to make space to plant something else - perhaps broad beans. The two sprouting broccoli plants in the foreground have reached a reasonable size. The Ragged Jack Kale seeds that we sowed last week have not sprouted yet. We gave all of the plants a watering with diluted worm tea from the neighbor's worm bin which will help to boost the growth for the rest of the season if the weather remains reasonable.
Underneath all of the cabbage plants we sowed:
The largest of the winter cabbages is only starting to form a head.
The largest of the summer cabbages is firm and is probably ready to harvest. The other two plants are quite a bit smaller (especially the one to the top right of the photo) and will likely not produce anything, and can probably be pulled out when the large one is harvested if we wanted the space to plant something else.
The largest of the red drumhead cabbage plants has formed a small head. the other two plants are farther behind. The dark marks on the leaves are from our hands as we felt the firmness of the cabbage.
The largest of the savoy cabbage plants is looking great with the crinkled leaves, with a small head starting to form.
The Long Black Radishes have sprouted, some areas are a bit thick and may need some thinning, while other areas are a bit too sparse. This is one of the issues with broadcasting seeds over a bed - especially late in the evening when there is little light to see what you are doing!
Most of the rows of greens have sprouted, and the fact that the seeds were sown late in the evening when there was very little light is made evident by the uneven spacing and scattered seedlings! Most of the seeds were very small and hard to see.
Lettuce seedlings coming up.
Most of the mizuna seedlings, which look very similar to many other brassica seedlings, are unfortunately clumped in one small length of the row.
A lot of Winter Purslane seeds were sown, especially at one end of the bed, and will have to be thinned quite severely.
The spinach has sprouted quickly as well and the larger seeds helped to sow a more even spacing.
Although the bottom half of most of the pea plants have dried and turned brown, the tops are still green and producing a steady crop of delicious peas.
Since last week a few of the plants have produced more flowers and small pods. These plants probably have had all of their older pods removed over the past few weeks and are desperately trying to produce some seed before the end of the season.
The runner beans harvest has begun, and we picked a few handfuls of beans today.
The climbing french beans are producing pods, though some have already grown too large to eat. Unfortunately the yield is quite low on each plant (especially in comparison to the runner beans) and only a few plants of each variety survived. We would need at a dozen healthy plants or more to produce enough tender pods for a dinner.
The courgette plant looks healthy ...
... and is still producing a lot of fruit, but they are not growing as quickly as courgettes usually do. This is probably due to the overshadowing by a tree and the lower levels of fertility. We gave this plant a boos of fertility by watering it with diluted tea from a worm bin.
Over the entire bed, under the beans and courgettes we sowed:
