Week 27 - Bed 12

The bed has opened up with the spinach and rocked pulled up. The 7 week old main crop carrot seedlings on the left appear to be doing better than the 10 week old early carrots on the right. This might be due to the earlier overshadowing by the spinach and rocket, or it might be due to the dry conditions of the bed when the early carrots were sown.

The two types of lettuce are growing well and in need of thinning (where the slugs have not already done the job). Note the beer trap for slugs in the background.

The early carrots are going to need to be thinned some more.

Week 27 - Bed 11

All of the alliums (onion, garlic and shallots) are doing well, as are the fennel and parsley seedlings in the foreground.

The 7 week old bulb fennel seedlings needing to be thinned.

Week 27 - Bed 10

This bed continues to do poorly, but given how much it is overshadowed in the early afternoon, this is not surprising. Poor weather and fertility were also contributing factors. In a few weeks we will add fertility to the bed and plant some fast growing salad crops.

Week 27 - Bed 9 Planting

We dug up all of the brassica transplants out of this bed and selected the healthiest plants for transplanting back into the bed at wider spacing, keeping in mind that the turnip will likely be harvested within the next few weeks.

We transplanted three plants of each vegetable, listed from foreground to background in the photo above (south to north):

• Waltman Calabrese Broccoli - autumn maturing variety, with a small central head followed by large number of side shoots
• Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli - early variety producing many purple spears from early March
• Darkmar 21 Brussels Sprouts - a early variety producing large, dark green sprouts in Oct-Dec
• Pentland Brig Kale - a very frost hardy and heavy cropping leafy winter veg with a distinct flavour, with leafy side shoots and spears like broccoli

There were many transplants left over, some of which immediately went to another garden and a few were temporarily heeled in to save them in case space became available in a neighboring garden - see the clump in the foreground of the photo above.

The weather conditions were damp, cool and overcast when we transplanted the young plants, but the sun came out shortly after and the plants stated to wilt because the disturbed roots could not suck up the amount of water that the plant needed. These plants will recover with a good watering and will be helped by the cool wet conditions that are forecast.

We sowed significantly more brassica plants that we had space for, We could have sowed only a half row of each and still had enough. The remaining mix of brassica seedlings that we did not have space for were steamed for dinner!

Week 27 - Bed 8

A view of this bed from the south showing the peas in the foreground, which have completely outweighed their flimsy supporting sticks, but are still producing, and the newly transplanted cabbage behind. We finally cleared the paths of grass/sod.

The cabbage transplants are doing well, helped by the abundant moisture and lack of scorching sun!

Week 27 - Bed 7 Planting

We finally dug and prepared this bed as a deep lazy bed with extra sod from the paths chopped up under the soil. This bed is slightly smaller than the others because of some large slate slabs at one end. In the prepared seedbed, we planted two winter storage roots from the brassica family:

• China Rose Radish (20 stations, 2 seeds each) - long rose pink roots with pure white flesh which can be harvested in autumn and stored if required
• Magres Swede (24 stations, 3 seeds each) - a purple top variety of this hardy winter root vegetable

The Swede is usually called a turnip or a swede turnip in Ireland and it is known as a rutabaga in North America.

Week 27 - Bed 6

This bed is growing well, with the potatoes looking healthy and the broad beans are finally producing a lot of flowers.

This photo shows the polycrop mix of peas in the top foreground starting to form pods, the broad beans in the background and the potato leaves at the bottom.

Week 27 - Bed 5

This bed has the lushest growth in the garden, with the tall broad beans to the south and the early potatoes to the north.

Very few pods on the otherwise tall and healthy broad bean plants.

The beans are almost ready for harvest, only another week or two before the (tiny harvest).

The early potatoes are ready to harvest and we dug up a few plants for dinner! The yield from the remaining plants will increase over the next few weeks, as there are still several small tubers that will continue to grow.

Week 27 - Bed 4

The peas and beans are growing well for the most part, even though the bed becomes overshadowed during the afternoon.

The climbing peas starting to grow beyond the first line of the support frame.

Week 27 - Bed 3 Planting

In the empty space at the north end of the bed (far end in the photograph below) we planted:

• Genovese Courgette (4 seeds at one station) - a pale, early variety with fine lightly mottled green fruit
• Yellow Straightneck Courgette (4 seeds at one station) - an early maturing yellow variety with smooth yellow fruits

These plants will produce later in the season.

Bean seedlings can be seen at the base of some of the bamboo poles.

A healthy climbing french bean seedling, one of only a few.

Week 27 - Bed 2

The bed photographed from the south has a lot of room for the courgette and squash plants to grow.

The Nero di Milano courgette plant (second from the north end of the bed) is doing well and there is noticeable growth since last week.

A closeup of the center of the courgette plant shows the small flower buds starting to forms.

The Yellow Straightneck courgette at the north end of the bed is noticeably paler.

Week 27 - Bed 1

The sweetcorn and the squash plants have become established and continue to grow but not as quickly as would be expected for this time of year, due to the continuing bad weather. One of the courgette seedlings that we planted between the corn has been eaten by slugs. Notice the overshadowing of the north end of the bed in this photograph taken in the early afternoon.

We will need some very good weather for the rest of the summer to get any crop of sweetcorn at all.

Week 26 - Overview

Some of the plants are doing well, and others are struggling. After the drought of March and April, the garden is now saturated! There was no rain today, but in the past 7 days, we have had over 52mm of rain - as much as we would normally expect in the whole month - including a downpour of over 24mm last Tuesday when we aborted the class!

This map of Ireland from the Met Éireann web site shows the amount of rainfall for the past week as a percentage of what we would normally expect (the garden is located in Dublin at the middle of the east coast - close to the 416% figure). It has been a very rainy period with only 1/3 of the sunshine that we would normally expect.

This diagram show how much rainfall would be needed to provide the soil with as much water as it could hold (without draining excess away). With a figure of 2mm, any more rain will start to saturate the soil, affecting plant growth. Luckily there is better weather on the way - though not great for this time of year.

Week 26 - Bed 12

Many of the lettuce plants have been thinned out by slugs - a job we should have done earlier.

Parsnip seedlings doing well enough to shelter the large garden slug (which was promptly dispatched after the photo was taken).

The Rocket/Arugola has bolted (gone to seed) and we cleared out all of the plants to make room to plant something else. The edible leaves will make a fiery topping to a pasta dish tonight!

The spinach has never well and plants that did grow have all bolted, and were pulled out as well.

Week 26 - Bed 11

The shallots are doing well and starting to form bulbs. The rest of the plants in this bed are growing reasonably well.

Week 26 - Bed 10

This bed has done very poorly. the only thing growing at all are the onions which have failed to even reach the size of salad onions/scallions. We will replant this bed in the next few weeks.

Week 26 - Bed 9

We cleared out all of the radishes (which would be too big by next week) thinned the turnip and cleared as much of the bed as we could to make room for the brassica transplants next week. The Kohl Rabi never became established.

Beautifully coloured Red Drumhead Cabbage seedlings ready to transplant.

Week 26 - Bed 8 Planting

We decided to give up on the beetroot and chard, and cleared them from the bed - besides we needed the space for the brassica transplants that are getting too big in Bed 9. We mixed in a few handfuls of dried seaweed fertilizer and transplanted 4 types of cabbages (listed from south to north):

• Holland Late Winter Cabbage (3 plants) - large, white, solid, hardy variety
• Cour di Bue Summer Cabbage (3 plants) - large pointed heart variety, maturing in early autumn, light green in colour
• Red Drumhead (Cabeza) Cabbage (3 plants) - large, solid, ball shaped, deep red variety to harvest from summer to autumn
• Vertus Savoy Cabbage (3 plants) - medium late variety with round flattish heads, medium green, well curled and frost hardy

View from the north end of the bed showing the 12 cabbage transplants, with the peas at the south end of the bed.

Week 26 - Bed 8

The peas are starting to produce, but the weight of the plants, helped by the heavy rains, have been too much for the small 'pea sticks' that we had stuck in the ground for the peas to climb up. This has created a mass of pea plants instead of 4 neat rows where all of the peas are easy to see and pick.


The peas are so sweet and tender, a real treat for the gardeners.

The beetroot and chard continue to do poorly, and the rhubarb chard is starting to 'bolt' - produce a seed head - which will further reduce the quality of the leaves. We really failed to provide the right conditions for these plants.

Week 26 - Bed 6

The 'Maris Peer' Potatoes are starting to flower!

Week 26 - Bed 5

The broad beans are starting to swell and could be ready for harvesting next week! Unfortunately there are not many beans on each plant, usually less than 4 and the plants have stopped flowering, so we are not going to harvest more than a sampling. This is probably due to a lack of pollinators as there are not many bees around.

Week 26 - Bed 4 Planting

The dwarf french beans are doing well - at least those that made it out of the ground and escaped being eaten by some unknown creature! We sowed some more seeds 'Hildora' and 'Maxi' varieties to fill in the gaps in the planting. In several places, both of the seeds that were planted came up and one will need to be thinned but we thought we would wait until next week gust in case the mysterious herbivore returns.

The climbing peas are doing well - most of the seeds deem to have germinated and are starting to reach for support.

We constructed a frame out of bamboo canes and used twine to create a rough climbing frame. In reasonable conditions, these peas could grow to over 2m tall!