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.