Week 39 - Bed 6

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.

Week 36 - Bed 6 Planting

We 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 material for the compost, adding nitrogen to the soil and keeping soil and nutrients from washing away with the winter rains.

Week 31 - Bed 6

This bed is starting to decline and looks remarkably different from when we were last at the garden a month ago. The potatoes have died back, the beans are almost finished and the peas really have not produced anything.

The potatoes should have continued to grow for at least another month, but were killed off probably by a combination of the very wet weather and possibly blight.

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 26 - Bed 6

The 'Maris Peer' Potatoes are starting to flower!

Week 23 - Bed 6

Polycrop in bed 6 with peas visible in the bottom left, broad bean to the right of center and potato in the background.

Week 21 - Bed 6

Polycrop mix of potatoes, broad beans and peas looking a bit sparse but the plants will fill i.

Week 20 - Bed 6 Planting

A few weeks ago we planted a polycrop bed combining potatoes and broad beans. We were going to add peas to the mix but did not have any seeds. This week we planted some peas in between the sprouting potatoes and broad beans:

• Rondo Dwarf Pea - a late maturing but heavy yielding double podded variety which grows to about 75cm high

Week 15 - Bed 6 Planting

This bed was prepared as a lazy bed, which involved cutting out a piece of sod with as much topsoil as remained attached, and turning it upside-down. The surface of the bed was then worked over with a sharp spade to break up the clods. In this bed we planted a polycrop mixture of potatoes and broad beans (fava beans), with peas to be added later (I forgot to bring the seeds):

• Maris Peer Potato - a second early variety with cream skin and creamy yellow floury flesh
• Hangdown Green Broad Bean - a vigorous early longpod variety

The potato sets were planted at wide spacings with the broad bean seeds pushed into the soil at random spacings between the potatoes.