Week 38 - Bed 3 Planting

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:

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

The clover will grow where there is space and light for the next few months and when the courgettes and beans are killed back by the frosts, the clover will continue to grow slowly throughout the winter. If the weather is reasonable, the clover will fill the bed and can remain until we are ready to sow into the bed next spring, at which time it can be dug in as a composting crop, adding fertility to the soil, including lots of nitrogen.