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.