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

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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

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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)



 

 

The first bed in the vegetable garden

I finally got started on the vegetable garden today and made my first bed from the wood that we cut over the last few weeks. First I laid out the planks for the sides, then using a steel digging pole I made a hole for each of the stakes two at each end and two in the middle of the bed where two planks joined. After hammering the stakes into the ground I nailed the planks to the stakes with 10cm galvanised nails. The bed's just over a metre wide and about 6 metres long. The ground was already pretty clear as the pigs had been using this area last year. I then placed cardboard along the bottom of the bed  and filled it with a mixture of Matt's compost and soil from mole hills in the garden. As this bed is for parsnips no manure was added because it tends to make the roots fork although I will add some wood ash and bone meal later on. 

 

The bed was planted up with parsnip White Gem Pastinaca sativa  in rows about 30cm apart trying to keep a gap of a few centimetres between the seeds. A 500 seed pack was used in the whole bed. 

 Parsnips are good companions with the pea family and to a lesser extent with alliums. Around the edges of the bed I planted Pea Delikett Pisum sativum Unfortunately the legumes and the aliums make poor companions (They're antagonists) so I put some garlic chives Allium tuberosum and some salad onion Ishikura Allium cepa near the centre of the bed some distance from the peas. The onion will germinate at 5C but the chives won't until it gets a bit warmer but I only put a few seeds in so it's no big deal if they don't come up. I may put in some radishes as well in the next few days. They won't bother the parsnips which is the main crop for this bed.

More planting despite a waning moon

Although I prefer planting on a waxing moon my hotbeds were delayed by about a week so I decided to plant anyway. All the following were planted yesterday except the okra which needed soaking overnight.

I discovered that trays in the hotbeds don't work, the two I put in with the Dyer's Greenweed and the peppermint were dry as a bone so I planted them straight into the compost in the hotbed. It looks like the hotbeds will need frequent watering. I'm taking a bit of a risk planting everything straight into them, although the temperature seems right at the moment (Everthing in the first bed is germinating even the tropical lemon grass) I'm not sure exactly how long the beds will stay warm for so I'm hoping for the best but from previous experience I'm pretty sure they'll hold up until the frosts are over. I decided to risk some melons and cucumbers as these are what I want to grow in there after I've pulled out most of the other plants. I collected these seeds myself last year from my own plants and I have a lot of them so I'm not worried so much about them but if I lose the peppers and tomatoes then it'll be a bit late to start again which is why I have some in the bender as well just in case.

here's the planting list:

Bed 1 (The first hot bed made) 

Added 


Shamanic tobacco Nicotiana Rustica 
Tobacco Havana Nicotiana tabacum
Tobacco Virginia
Grain Amaranth (I'm unsure of the species I collected these seeds from plants I grew and lost my notes from when I planted them)
Quinoa Chenopodium quinoa

Water melon Black mountain (Short season) Citrullus lanatus 

I planted a few of these along the top of the bed. 

Bed 2 (The new bed)
Celery tall Utah  Apium graveolens dulce
Pepper Italian pepperoncini Capsicum annuum 
Tomato box car Willie Lycopersicon esculentum 
Chilli Navaho  
Chilli Serrano tampequino 
Aubergine Early long purple 2 Solanum melongena 
 Indian pot chilli
Pepper Santa Fe Grande
Tomato Ailsa Craig
Chilli Numex Espanhola
Chilli Delhi hot
Pepper Anaheim
Tomatillo purple Physalis ixocarpa 
False Saffron Kinko (Safflower) Carthamnus tinctorius 
Tomato Black Russian 
Pepper D-asti Giallo

Echinacea angustifolia

Cucumber Marketmore Cucumis sativus 

Basil Holy, green Ocimum tenuiflorum 

Celery Red Soup

Lemon Coriander Coriandrum sativum

Celery Green soup

Okra Hill country heirloom red Abelmoschus esculentus

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

I finally managed to get a photo of the woodpecker that's been visiting my feeding station, here he is. 

Germination in the hotbed and second hotbed complete

Several things have already germinated in the hotbed, the Russian Tarragon, tomatillo verde, both the lemon grass varieties and one of the two things I planted the day after the last planting (they needed 24 hours of soaking)
Chinese milk vetch (Huang Qi) Astragalus membranaceus 

I also planted some Asparagus Conover's collossal  Asparagus officinalis

There's still about half the first hotbed to plant and I finished filling the second one today.

The last couple of days we've had very frosty mornings with bright warm sunny days.

The attempt to double dig a bed with a mini digger didn't work that well, I ended up with a hole full of water because of our fine clay. I used it to save myself a walk to the nearest pond for water for my indoors plants. It might be an idea to make it deeper so I have some water right next to my bender for watering. I'm in two minds though because of mosquitos.
I'm considering just using mulch beds for the rest. I need to get some beds in right now for broad beans, parsnips and some of the herbs. If the weather's good tomorrow I'll get cracking.  


Short one today, there's not much to be said about shifting manure and compost which is what most of the work now is all about.