Big cats?

TThat's Henry. I named him because I don't intend to eat him. I got the chickens a couple of weeks ago and I'm collecting five Indian Runner ducks next week. Unfortunately two of my Light Sussex pullets got taken by a predator last week in broad daylight with me about a hundred feet away.

Matt and Julia have had attacks on their pigs and there are rumours of a big cat in the area. Above are Matt and Julia with a load of water melons for the pigs that were over ripe and rejected by a supermarket. The chickens love watermelon too.

Nearly Solstice and mixed results

As you can see the cucurbit beds are doing quite nicely. They needed a dressing with bonemeal (£27 for 25kg I was shocked) and wood ash because some off the courgettes looked a bit off color but everything looks pretty good now.

















Here's one of the watermelons

Unfortunately it seems the mulch beds have been a complete failure as compared with the dug beds 

I've started digging all the mulch beds. I can't afford to take years to get these productive. I'm planting marigolds, sage, russian tarragon, japanese catmint, catmint, thyme, coriander, basil and other things like chives and garlic chives throughout the beds. Legumes are coplanted with everything but alliums.

As so many of the things in the mulch beds have failed I've scrapped the documentation I was going to do on the vegetables I'm growing. 

Once I have the problems ironed out I'll keep track of that again.

The herb garden has gone berserk and I think it's a wonderful jungle, that's the milk thistle


I thought I'd say a little bit about the forest garden. I've been planting cider apples, a couple of pears (One of which was killed by the deer. I had to bridge graft one of the apples as it was completely ring barked. I took of a couple of twigs from the tree long enough to cover the gap and got to it with my grafting tape.)

The tree dosn't look too bad.)

There are a couple of Albizia julibrissin , three Honey locusts Gleditsia triacanthos a load of gooseberries and some named cobs. There are also a few cherry plums.

For later addition I'm growing a lot of the other plants for the forest garden in the polytunnel garden. The above is the American ground nut Apios Americana I'll have enough of them this year to risk putting some into the garden. They fix nitrogen as well as being a useful food.

Watering is the main chore at the moment but it looks like it might rain today.

Flea beetles

The picture is of the beginnings of a nettle and comfrey tea. The picture was taken about 3 weeks ago and now it's a brown stinking mess bt it's really good plant food.

I haven't posted for a while because there have been some problems and I wanted to wait ntil I knew what was going on before posting about it.

It mostly boils down to a lack of water. I was hoping that the mulch beds would retain water well and for large plants it does but it's not terribly good for seedlings. Because the plants were water stressed we've had an invasion of flea beetles. Once the garden gets going a bit more and the herbs I've been planting arond the edges of the beds get going things will improve and I decided to dig the beds in the polytunnel garden where I had the strawberries for brassicas and I think that's far enough from the beetles to avoid the problem. There's also a water supply nearby so I can water them more frequently. I planted Jerusalem artichoke Helianthus tuberosus
some Taro Colocasia esculenta This is a tropical plant but if we have a decent summer we may get something. I have a plant in my bender that I've kept going for 3 years. I also planted a few sweet potatoes Ipomoea batatas

In any case, the flea beetles mean all the brassicas have been hammered. Everything else is getting big and growing well but I've decided to dig in the mulch in all the beds for next year. The dug beds have been the most successful.

I need to have a long think about water. Wish I had the money to get a trickle watering system. 

No sign of tutors or tutorials yet so no progress on the diploma front.


I've been feeding all the beds with wood ash and bonemeal. Several thjings were looking a bit deficient but they're looking better now. I've also been using rock dust and mycorrhyzal fungi (They work together although the rock dust people talk about worms on their packaging it's mycorrhyzal fungi that pass the minerals to the plants.


Six Bay trees were planted arond the edges of the main garden Laurus nobilis 


All the strawberries were moved into the fenced garden as the rabbits were killing them all by digging them up. They have a bad habit of digging round the roots ot my perennials and damaging them Fortnately Star killed his first rabbit yesterday so maybe he can help scare them off. I portioned it and fried it up for him.

Compost problems

W

Well I'm back  and it turns out that there's a bit of a problem. Although it looked reasonably good wet, it's a bit coarse and has a bit too much woodchip in it and some things aren't doing very well, specifically the brassicas and the carrots. Things are doing a lot better where the beds were dug and the soil mixed in with the compost. I'll be making some finer stuff over the next few days by collecting nettles before they flower and comfrey and building a compost heap with that. If I get it before the seeds set it should be ok and I'll top dress the beds with it once it's well rotted down. Although I don't like digging as it destroys the existing soil ecosystem I may have to do some digging at some stage but for now I'll see what can be done with top dressing.

I moved what strawberries survived the deer into the new garden and we made some more beds in there. That bed is about 10m long by 2.5m wide and about a foot deep. Another 48 strawberry plants were planted in there. 

I've completely lost track of what's planted in that garden as I've misplaced my notes. Most of it was listed in the seed order I listed earlier in the year. In this garden things are planted in overlapping clumps and swathes in an attempt no create something that looks a little more natural than straight lines. Edible herbs and flowers are also scattered around. The herbs in the hotbeds and some of those from the herb garden will also be planted in when they get a bit larger, I suspect postings will get a bit more regular here when I start my diploma.

I'll be planting butternut squash tomorrow and starting my tea and compost making, weed control and watering is a daily task although Anne got the stuff to extend the drip irrigation system in the polytunnel extended to almost all the rest of the tunnel.

All the large seeded things seem to be doing well.

It's early days, the beds will improve with mulching and that takes time.

Back soon.

Under the weather

I'll be back posting next week. I have a painful abcess so I'm taking time off till it clears up.

Busy times and a dauntingly large list of things to record

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the docmentation but I had a massive planting and I'm looking at a daunting list of things to docment which will take me a little while to transfer from paper to here.

After a couple of dry weeks we finally had some rain yesterday so everything should germinate soon. I've used up all the compost in the immediate vicinity so the next big job is shifting quite a few tons of compost from the other side of the farm to the new gardens.

I found that the deer had ripped off the tube and ring barked one of the cider apples I planted last autumn so I took some cuttings and made a bridge graft on it and grafted a few scions to other apple trees to try and save the variety. It was done a bit late so I may lose it but we have some 10 year old root stock that I'll be layering in the autumn and then we'll get serious with the fruit trees.

We have a new Wwoofer called Nicholas who's been a great help. 

I will try and get this huge planting post out of the way in the next couple of days but for now I'm having a day off.

The rest of that planting

My email program blew up this week and I lost a few emails one of them was from a potential Wwoofer I wanted to answer and now I have no means of contecting them. If you see this could the potential volunteer in Sussex (Or was it Surrey) please email me again.

A huge amount has been planted in the last week Matt gave me Toby's old garden to work with and it was already mulched in many places with cardboard and a foot of compost.

I decided to turn it into a wilderness of veg. Things are in clumps or in edges. I've tried to make as many edges as possible. I've sown many more than will eventally grow there as I'll be using it as a source of baby veg and will thin it down to it's evental state.


Planting.

Melon bed 2 
Lemon coriander Coriandrum sativum throughout bed

South to north
Watermelon black montain Citrullus lanatus
Collective farm woman Cucumis melo inodorus 
Melon Tigger Cucumis melo 
Cucumber Gherkin National Cucumis sativus

Melon bed 3

Coriander  Coriandrum sativum throughout bed

Watermelon black montain Citrullus lanatus

Pumpkin Full Moon Cucurbita maxima

Cucumber long green ridge Cucumis sativus

Pumpkin Atlantic Giant Cucurbita maxima

Cucumber Gherkin National Cucumis sativus

Melon bed 4

Lemon coriander Coriandrum sativum throughout bed
Watermelon black montain Citrullus lanatus 
Cucumber long green ridge Cucumis sativus
Collective farm woman Cucumis melo inodorus
Cucumber Gherkin National Cucumis sativus

Melon Minnesota Midget Cucumis melo 

I still have pages of planting to transcribe so I'll do it when it cools down later. 

A very busy week and a lot of planting

W

We had an extremely busy week last week, with the help of two Wwoofers, Leia and Noah and Jose and Matt who live here we've made a good deal of progress. There are now four melon beds and five vegetable beds and bean trenches dug all around the perimeter fence.

 A bean trench is just a spade depth trench alongside a support like a fence that you fill with compost.

Melon bed 1 is the covered one melon bed 2 is the one directly South of it melon bed 3 is next to melon bed 1 and 4 is South of that.

From South to North

Melon bed 1 

Courgette De Nice A Fruit Rond Cucurbita pepo
Winter squash Burgess Buttercup Cucurbita maxima (Plants for a future is down at the time of writing)
Cousa Courgette Trieste half long Cucurbita pepo
Winter squash Blue Banana  Cucurbita maxima 

Winter squash Anna Schwartz Hubbard  Cucurbita maxima 
Courgette Nero di Milano Cucurbita pepo
Pumpkin Jack O'Lantern Cucurbita pepo (I think)
Courgette Green bush Cucurbita pepo

These were planted a few days ago and all have germinated now.

Melon bed 2

Short season Water Melon Blacktail mountain
Short season Canteloupe Collective farm woman
Melon Tigger
Cucumber Gherkin National


Blacktail Mountain was also planted in the polytunnel with the ginger.


A lot more to follow too tired to write more.

Update on the gardens.

T

This amazing fungus is growing in hotbed 1. Haven't identified it yet but I've been a bit busy.

On to the update. Hotbed 1:

Garden Catmint Nepeta racemosa  Germinated well
English sage Salvia officinalis Germinated well
Anise Hyssop Agastache foeniculum A few germinated
Japanese catmint schizonepesa tenuifolia No sign of germination
Chinese liquorice Glycyrrhiza Uralensis (Gan Cao)  No sign of germination (I do have a few plants from last year though)
Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium   No sign of germination (But I have more and the ones in the herb garden seem to have germinated)
Russian Tarragon Artemisia dracunculoides Germinated well
Artichoke Imperial Star Cynara scolymus Germinated well Nearly time to put these out. I'll leave them a couple more weeks just in case of frost
Giant cape gooseberry Physalis peruviana Germinated well but most were eaten by a slug or snail
Dwarf cape gooseberry Physalis pruinosa Germinated well
Tomatillo Verde Physalis Ixocarpa A few germinated
Aubergine Snowy F1 (One that slipped through) Solanum melongena A few germinated
East Indian Lemongrass Cymbopogon flexuosus Germinated well but quite a few seem to have been eaten I really need to get some nematodes
West Indian Lemongrass Cymbopogon citratus Germinated well but quite a few seem to have been eaten
Chilli Numex bailey piquin Capsicum annuum A few germinated
Chilli Bhut Jolokia  A few germinated
Pepper Red Cheese  Capsicum annuum A few germinated 
Chinese milk vetch (Huang Qi) Astragalus membranaceus   Germinated well 
Asparagus Conover's collossal  Asparagus officinalis 
Shamanic tobacco Nicotiana Rustica Germinated very well
Tobacco Havana Nicotiana tabacum Germinated very well
Tobacco Virginia Germinated very well
Grain Amaranth No sign of germination.These seeds may have been collected too early I was in a rush to leave my last project. I reseeded with some of the original packet from last year
Quinoa Chenopodium quinoa No sign of germination.These seeds may have been collected too early I was in a rush to leave my last project. I reseeded with some of the original packet from last year

Water melon Blacktail mountain (Got the name wrong in the original post short season) Citrullus lanatus Germinated but got eaten replanted

Hotbed 2
Dyers  greenweed Genista Tinctoria No sign of this but then it was allowed to dry out completely just after planting. I'll try again.
 Peppermint Mentha Piperita  Germinated well
Celery tall Utah  Apium graveolens dulce Germinated well
Pepper Italian pepperoncini Capsicum annuum Germinated well
Tomato box car Willie Lycopersicon esculentum Germinated well
Chilli Navaho  
Chilli Serrano tampequino A few germinated
Aubergine Early long purple 2 Solanum melongena Germinated well
 Indian pot chilli A few germinated
Pepper Santa Fe Grande A few germinated
Tomato Ailsa Craig Germinated well
Chilli Numex Espanhola A few germinated
Chilli Delhi hot A few germinated
Pepper Anaheim A few germinated
Tomatillo purple Physalis ixocarpa  Germinated well
False Saffron Kinko (Safflower) Carthamnus tinctorius Germinated well
Tomato Black Russian  Germinated well
Pepper D-asti Giallo Germinated well

Echinacea angustifolia Germinated well

Cucumber Marketmore Cucumis sativus  Germinated well

Basil Holy, green Ocimum tenuiflorum  Germinated well

Celery Red Soup Germinated well

Lemon Coriander Coriandrum sativum Germinated well

Celery Green soup Germinated well

Okra Hill country heirloom red Abelmoschus esculentus Germinated well

Oysterleaf Mertensia maritima May have germinated (Might be a weed seed can't tell yet never seen this plant before)
passiflora edulis No sign yet

and in the top of the bed in 4 places Melon Collective farm woman  Cucumis melo inodorus Germinated well

None of the pots put outside to stratify have germinated yet. Nor the big pots on the floor in the bender (These may have been eaten by rats we're using eradibait to reduce their numbers. It's a substance made of corn cellulose wheat flower and molasses it coats their gut and prevents the signal that makes them drink from reaching their brain. They die of thirst horrible for the rat but safe for everything else. Unfortunately they are competing for our food and present a risk of disease so they have to go). 

All the plants in trays in the bender have germinated except the papaya but it hasn't been warm enough in here for that one. If I put it in the hotbed it may germinate.

Forgot to say the passiflora caerulea germinated (Two of them)

Pretty much everything in vegetable beds one and two have germinated but in the polytunnel only the thyme, sage and radish have come up. Most of the beetroot seedlings were eaten so I replanted them.

I planted 19 pieces of ginger Zingiber officinale in three rows at the Eastern end of the polytunnel in between the rows of sage and thyme. (They'll be coming out before the ginger gets large)


That's it for the moment The herb beds are germinating but they're a bit small to see what's what yet.

The rest of bed three and a melon bed

This is a melon bed. It's good for growing the whole cucurbit family and it's bigger than it looks in this photo check out the relative size of the wheelbarrow to the right of it. I haven't put the polythene cover on it yet because I'm letting it settle for a day or two before planting it.

I'll describe the details below.

Planting was completed in bed 3 in the vegetable garden yesterday; to the north of the Arran pilot First Early potatoes  Solanum tuberosum I planted pink fir apple (A strange shaped long thin pink potato ) and to the North of that Kestrel second earlies. The potato is an incredibly useful plant. It has medicinal and other uses in addition to it's use as a staple food. The wikipedia article is also well worth reading.


At the northenmost end of beds 1 2 and 3 I planted about a half dozen seeds of artichoke  Cynara scolymus Violet de Provence (Has medicinal uses and is a curdling agent) These will be a permanent feature assuming they germinate and survive the rabbits (I will block their run in a day or two but I want to take a few for meat first to pay me for my lost beetroot seedlings and deter the others).

The potatoes didn't quite fill the bed so I did a block of Parsnip Pastinaca sativa  Gurnsey
and a block of Carrot Daucus carota sativus Cosmic purple (My favourite carrot it's purple outside and orange and yellow inside. Intense colours. Intense colours in vegetables indicates they contain a lot of flavinoids so a lot of the veg I grow is darkly coloured).

Another block of beetroot Beta vulgaris craca Boltardy and pea Pisum sativum
Oregon sugar pod all around the edges of the northern half of the bed.


On to the melon bed.

Y

You start by piling up about a metre's depth of unrotted horse manure and stable sweepings. (You can make it thinner if you just use horse dung without the straw but it makes much better compost with a decent amount of straw in it and you don't want it hot enough to burn your plants). You can make the bed as long as you like but 8 -10 metres is a good size. 


A melon bed can be used for melons, courgettes, pumpkings and squashes and cucumbers. For melons and cucumbers you leave the plastic on but you can take it off in mid june (In Southern England, cooler climates can leave the plastic on but it means more watering if you don't have drip feed) for the squashes and marrows.

This work really takes it out of you so if possible get help. You'll be moving several tons of horse manure. You often find that stables that keep their horses indoors are willing to give their manure away for nothing if you ask nicely. The more of this stuff you can get the better. This manure will be feeding the beds next year and will themselves become raised beds because they kill at the perennial weeds with their heat and the darkness under them. Hotbeds without manure have to be huge.

 You then put a layer of compost about 6cm thick on top of the manure. You can plant this quite densely because there is a lot of food in the hotbed below (Cucurbits love feeding they;ll get huge) This job could have been done a month or to ago to give the stuff an even earlier start but I'm a bit behind schedule in a few areas because of the sheer amount of barrowing to do. Once the main beds are made the pace will get easier.

 

 Use a pole digger to make holes about a metre apart for some hazel or willow poles, twist them together and tie them off.

 Tie in some cross bracing I just put in a horizontal pole here but I'll probably reinforce it with a latice of poles which is a must for windy areas. You leave it to settle a day or two before planting but it can be planted up even in frosty weather once covered. Not sure how far below zero though the other hotbeds have been fine down to about -5 so far but I'm not expecting too much more of that now although it's still possible.. I'll post another pic once it's covered.

I'm working on a big post as a status report on how things are growing and I've taken a lot of photos that need to be winnowed down so my next post should be soon. Not a lot you can say about barrowing manure hence my lack of posts recently.

Just a quick one for now  Made the third bed in the vegetable garden and planted half of it with First early potato Arran Pilot (These could have been planted indoors in February but I needed the covered space for other things) the half planted was also planted with broad bean Witkiem Manita and peas were planted on either side, Pea Mange tout Carouby de Mausanne on the western side and pea Early Onward on the eastern side. The bed was dug in this case. (Only to one spade depth) after a dressing of about 3cm of mixed manure and compost was spread over the bed. 

I've been going through the plants I brought with me and many of them including quite a few cuttings from my last project seem to have made it. I'll go into detail on that soon.

I sent in my application form for the diploma in applied Permaculture yesterday so with some luck I'll be qualified in a couple of years.

The picture is of one of the few remaining strawberries after the deer had finished with them. The hungry time for the wildlife is nearly over so hopefully there will be fewer losses now.

More herbs

Leia double dug the remaining large intense bed and one of the small beds so they got planted up. I'll list them later in the post but I'd like to meander for a bit. 

Almost everything planted in the hot boxes has germinated (In bed 2 the only thing not showing is the dyer's greenweed) I'll get some photos for the next post. A few of the cuttings I took from my last project are showing signs of life so I may have some more plants for the forest garden than I thought.

In the big pots indoors there's been signs of life but unfortunately a rat has been rummaging in the pots and I don't know how much will survive that. (Can't avoid rats here it's one of the reasons for having raised platform beds)

My plant collection looks like it's been hammered by deer and the elements. I'll list what's survived when I know later and when we get going with the forest garden. A lot of the plants I've been planting in the herb garden are for understory plants and for the edges. I already planted a couple of cider apples, a couple of dessert pears, some cobb nuts (Named varieties I'll list them when we get into the forest garden) I have ginko biloba, honey locust, silk trees and some mulberries to go in as well as a bunch of grape vines. Until the plants get well enough spread and established we're vulnerable to losing species or varieties, the deer are remorseless and Star doesn't seem to have deterred them very much.

The strawberry beds I put in last September have been hammered. I won't know how bad the damage is for a few weeks yet. The grass is beginning to grow a bit so the deer are likely to be pressuring my plants a little less soon.

The weather has been much warmer recently, spring is definitely here, there have been a couple of t-shirt days.

The mullberries stratifying outside were brought back in and there's a hint of life there.

I need to repot my pineapples and the passiflora edulis soon as they're beginning to grow again. Pineapples are easy. You take the top off a pineapple, pull off the bottom few leaves, dip it in rooting hormone or rub it with crushed willow bark (It acts like rooting hormone). It'll grow on a window sill or in a hot bed over the winter and in about five years you'll have a pineapple and a bunch of baby plants.

I planted up the small bed Leia dug with a white papaver somniferum called Shayma. I want the seeds and I also spread some seeds around disturbed areas. I thought some blocks of white would look nice. 

Planted Mertensia maritima and passiflora edulis in the end of hot bed 2, I want to try some of the passiflora in the polytunnel and see if it can survive there. (It's my favourite fruit if you want to grow some just get a fruit from the supermarket and sow the seeds at 30C daytime and 20C night time temps or you can throw it in a hot bed like I did and hope for the best)


Two of my tree tomato Cyphomandra betacea cuttings seem to have pulled through.


Anyway here's what's in herb bed five now from left to right (I'll draw a diagram when I've finished working out what I'm doing with the rest of the space and I need to find out what's still alive in the herb garden)

Mentha spicata var. crispa Curly mint
Origanum vulgare hirtum Greek Origano
Scutellaria lateriflora Virginian skullcap
Eschscholzia californica Californian poppy
Centaurium erythraea Centaury
Lycopus europaeus Gypsywort
Petroselinum crispum Parsley Italian Giant

Allium fistulosum Red Welsh onion

Filipendula Ulmaria Meadowsweet

Borago officinalis Borage (Blue dye from the flowers of this, the flowers are also said to give you courage by making you produce adrenaline. Warriors used to take borage flowers before battle)
Malva sylvestris Mallow (Contains mucilage good edible and medicinal plant)
Papaver somniferum Shayma
Chrysanthemum coronarium Shingiku greens the flowers make a chamomile substitute (Got to find my chamomile seeds)

Four beds dug and planted in the herb garden

Leia the Wwoofer has been helping me double dig the intensive beds in the herb garden and they've been planted up with an assortment of edible, medicinal or otherwise useful herbs.

The first bed nearest the camera on the left has been named the poisons bed and has some of the more dangerous herbs in it (with a couple of safe ones that I'll duplicate in the edible beds) 

They are numbered one to four as you go back from the camera.


Herb bed 1: The poisons bed


From right to left


Papaver somniferum Poppy the giant 
Artemisia absinthum Wormwood

Valeriana officinalis Valerian
Atropa bella-donna Deadly night shade
Lactuca virosa Wild Lettuce
Hyoscyamus niger Black henbane
Levisticum officinale Lovage (not a poisonous plant it just slipped in there)
Poterium Sanguisorba Salad burnet (also not a poison)
Saponaria officinalis Soapwort


Herb bed 2
Left to right
Petroselinum crispum Var. tuberosum Hamburg rooted parsley about a 60cm by 80cm block
Agrimonia eupatoria Agrimony
Carum carvi Caraway
Cichorium intybus Wild chichory
Levisticum officinale Lovage 

Poterium Sanguisorba Salad burnet

Anthriscus cerefolium Chervil

Herb Bed 3 (Cold frame)
Right to left
Allium schoenoprasum Chives (I also found a few bright purple potatoes that looked healthy so I put them in with the chives I'll give them a feed a bit later)
Monarda fistulosa Bergamot
Calendula arvensis Field marigold (Around the edges of the bed)
Achillea millefolium Yarrow

Isatis tinctoria Woad
Lepidium meyenii Maca
Origanum majorana Sweet Marjoram
Satureja hortensis Summer savoury
Nepeta cataria Catmint
Satureja montana Winter savoury
Teucrium scorodonia Wood sage
Silybum marianum Milk thistle
Ephedra sinica Ma huang


Herb bed 4 (Narrow bed about half the width of the others and a bit longer)


Half the bed was planted quite densely with Fragaria vesca Wild strawberry plants that I dug out of bed 3


from left to right
Artemisia absinthum Wormwood (this can be eaten in small quantities but I'll warn people about it if it germinates)
Artemisia dracunculoides  Russian tarragon
Levisticum officinale Lovage
Foeniculum vulgare Fennel

Allium fistulosum Welsh onion

And these are next. 

Brought in the Morus seeds from outside, here's hoping they germinate. The Monkey puzzes are germinating will pot them on soon.

The hotbeds are flourishing. I'll report on what's germinated soon but my melons have started so till next time.

A rat's nest of nettle roots and double digging

T

This is the old herb garden by the well. There are eight raised intensive beds in it that haven't been worked for four years and the whole area has been colonised by nettles and brambles.

Now the nettle Urtica dioica is a pretty amazing plant, It has a vast number of uses, it can be eaten (cooked of course), you can use it as a vegetarian rennet, you can make a yellow dye from the roots and a green food colouring from the leaves, you can make paper and extract fibres from it, it makes a great compost and plant food and it has quite a few different medicinal uses (see the link for other uses of nettles), but it's aggressively invasive and a complete pain in the neck if it gets into your beds. So, instead of the nice easy job I was expecting bringing the beds in the herb garden back into use I was faced with a problem that could only be resolved by double digging the bed. You see one of the ways you can propagate nettles is by root cutting and it doesn't take much root to create a new plant. So each spade full of soil had to be crushed by hand and then all the roots had to be removed because if just a few roots remained, and the bed left, it would be growing nothing but a mass of nettles within a few months. As it turned out double digging a small bed just two metres by 80cm took me all day and I'll still probably be pulling nettles out of there for the next few years. Here are some pictures of the process.

 This is the bed to be worked on. Those little green plants in there are the new nettle shoots. It's quite deceptive the whole bed was one tangled mass of nettle roots down to nearly a metre deep.

 The whole bed was like this and I expect all the others to be just the same.

I

 I emptied out a trench on one side of the bed and piled up the soil further on the bed removing as many roots as possible as I went.

Star, of course, loves fetching anything thrown so he kept on dumping roots back in the bed.

Making sure as many roots as possible were removed the soil is piled up in the trench dug and you move along the bed.

There's the finished bed. only seven more to go. 

I realise this is pretty basic but I want this blog to be useful to people of all levels of experience.

Second bed in the vegetable garden made and planted

I

I finished the second raised mulch bed today and planted it up. The only difference between this bed and the other (apart from being slightly longer due to the length of the timber) is that I put in a thin layer of well rotted horse manure before putting in the compost. This bed is mostly for broad beans but as they are such good companions I planted the rows further apart than they usually would be and planted a row of something else between each one and didn't plant a double row of beans. The beans were planted just about 25cm apart with about 60cm between each row. The compost is about 15cm deep. I've never planted carrots in a mulch bed before as I'm not sure what will happen to them when they hit the cardboard. I usually plant them in a bath or similar container to keep them above the carrot fly's altitude but the sides of that bed are about 50cm deep so I thought I'd have a go, plant a couple of rows and see what happens. 

By the way, most of the species links go through to Plants For A Future and give a great deal of detail about each plant including propagation information and medicinal or other uses. Most of the real information in this blog is in those links. If Pfaf doesn't list a plant I usually link through to Wikipedia.

Here's what got planted from North to South (North is to the right of the photograph)

Broad Bean Super Aquadulce Vicia faba major
Turnip Purple Top Milan Brassica rapa
Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 
Turnip Purple Top Milan 
Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 
Beetroot Boltardy Beta vulgaris craca
Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 
Beetroot Boltardy 
Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 

Carrot Nantes 2 (early) Daucus carota sativus 

Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 
Carrot Nantes 2 (early) 
Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 
 Endive Blonde Full Heart Beta vulgaris flavescens
Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 
Cauliflower Purple Cape Brassica oleracea botrytis (Must remember to dust the brassicas with a little lime next week)
Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 

French Parsley Petroselinum crispum

Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 

Cabbage Derby Day  Brassica oleracea capitata

Broad Bean Super Aquadulce 

Chinese Mustard Southern Giant Brassica juncea crispifolia

Broad Bean Super Aquadulce

My focus for the rest of the week will be in the herb gardens (There's already a herb garden by the well that's a bit neglected so I'll be bringing the raised beds there back into production and creating additional beds for herbs by my bender)