Week 36 - Bed 10 Planting

We finally cleared out this bed and prepared a seedbed into which we scattered a variety of green manure seeds:

• Italian Ryegrass - a fast growing hardy grasing grass which will produce a lot of biomass
• Crimson Clover - a quick growing, vigourous annual which fixes nitrogen and will attracts bees in the spring
• Winter Vetch - a hardy nitrogen fixing forage plant

This combination of green manures is know as the "Landsberger Mix" and is promoted as the ideal overwintering composting crop, producing a lot of organic material, adding nitrogen to the soil and keeping soil and nutrients from washing away with the winter rains, and preparing the soil for next season. The crop will be dug into the soil next spring to compost in place.

Week 31 - Bed 10

After a month of neglect and rain, the plants in this bed are in poor shape. The surrounding vegetation is certainly doing better.

One of the only lettuce plants that has reached any size next to a few very small onions. We will have to replant this bed.

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 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 21 - Bed 10

Bed 10 was planted as a polycrop containing carrots, parsnip, scorzonera, dill, parsley, several different lettuce varieties and two types of onions. This bed has really failed to take off yet. A lot of things sprouted but very little growth, probably due to the dry conditions, the poor soil in this area of the garden and the fact that this is the most overshadowed bed in the garden. We will probably dig up the entire bed and start again.

Week 16 - Bed 10 Planting

We finished double-digging this bed, worked it down to a fine seedbed and sowed a polycrop (everything mixed in together) containing the following mix of seeds:

• Long Black Scorzonera - a heavy yielding, long root with white flesh and black skin
• Nantes II Carrot - an early, small cored, medium length, blunt variety
• Halblange Hamburg Parsley - a variety of parsley grown primarily for its thick, pointed half long parsnip-like roots
• White Gem Parsnip - wedge shaped root variety with smooth white skin
• Tetra Dill - a herb with feathery foliage and aniseed flavour
• Marvel of Four Seasons Lettuce - red and green butterhead heirloom variety
  
• Aruba Lettuce - a very red, large headed looseleaf variety
• All Year Round Lettuce - a pale green compact butterhead variety
  
• Salad Bowl Lettuce - cut and come again looseleaf lettuce, with long green leaves
  
• Roger Lettuce - red batavia variety
  
• Little Gem Lettuce - dwarf cos variety
  
• Till Lettuce - dense looseleaf variety with arrow shaped leaves

These seeds were raked in and pressed into the soil and covered with a thin layer of peat compost. The following onion varieties were then randomly transplanted into the seedbed from pots which were originally sown from seed in week 11:

• Baun Onion - a large, white, strong bulb excellent keeping variety
• James Long Keeping Onion - an old english variety, with medium sized reddish brown bulb