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.

The start of the new beds and todays planting

We finally got the mini digger working today and started making the beds for the medicinal herb garden (and promptly ran out of diesel), No matter, we have the digger for another day or so and we'll do what we can tomorrow. It's raining heavily outside in any case. 

I started planting up the hotbed we finished yesterday. So far from right to left I planted 

Garden Catmint Nepeta racemosa 
English sage Salvia officinalis 
Anise Hyssop Agastache foeniculum 
Japanese catmint schizonepesa tenuifolia 
Chinese liquorice Glycyrrhiza Uralensis (Gan Cao) 
Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium  
Russian Tarragon Artemisia dracunculoides
Artichoke Imperial Star Cynara scolymus
Giant cape gooseberry Physalis peruviana 
Dwarf cape gooseberry Physalis pruinosa 
Tomatillo Verde Physalis Ixocarpa 
Aubergine Snowy F1 (One that slipped through) Solanum melongena 
East Indian Lemongrass Cymbopogon flexuosus 
West Indian Lemongrass Cymbopogon citratus 
Chilli Numex bailey piquin Capsicum annuum
Chilli Bhut Jolokia 
Pepper Red Cheese  Capsicum annuum

We're still in a waxing moon and I prefer to do most of my planting when the moon is waxing (It seems to help germination but that's just my opinion.
I often follow a biodynamic calendar but I haven't got one yet for this year) 

Forgot to mention that so far only the tomatoes have germinated, of those the cherokee black have done the best. They all seem to have germinated whereas only one or two each of the others have done so so far. They started coming up about 3 weeks ago and the others started coming this week.

More tomorrow hopefully

One hotbed completed and some planting

Leia came back to the farm yesterday and helped me with some gardening today. 

We planted some quick growing stuff in the new bed in the polytunnel and finished the first hotbed. (The bed in the picture is about 3 meters long, about 1.5 meters wide and just over a meter deep) The area around the one pictured looks a bit untidy because it's right next to where a lot of the wood cutting gets done.

The new bed in the poltunnel was planted in rows from right to left with Radish, Giant of Sicily, Pea mange tout Norli, Lettuce Ariana, Salad onion Paris silverskin two rows of Pea Early onward, Sage English broadleaf Salvia Officinalis , Broad leaf thyme Thymus pulegioides the herbs will be planted outside when they're large enough. Planted a tray of Angleica archangelica in a tray that I put outside. I'm hoping we have enough cold weather to break dormancy. Planted a tray each of peppermint Mentha Piperita and Dyers greenweed Genista Tinctoria that I put in the new hotbed.

Here's how to make a hotbed:

  Create some walls for the hotbed (We used some polystyrene filled walls from a prefab hut) and fill the bottom with some branches to allow air into the bottom.

 Fill with fresh manure (In this case stable sweepings from Mr Miles next door) leaving a south facing slope walking on the manure from time to time to make sure you have enough in there to get hot. They say you need about a meter depth for it to get hot enough.

 Cover the manure with about 6 to 10 cm of compost and then cover with glass or plastic. The whole thing should have a slight southward slope. I have the means to make another two of these and we're part way through making them.


These beds will make a good place to germinate most of our warm loving seeds and then they'll be planted up with cucurbits like melons and courgettes, aubergines and okra later on. 

Machine hassles and some hotbeds

Machines often fail here for some unknown reason and this week there's been a lot of it going on. First the mini tractor got stuck in reverse gear and wouldn't come out then the mini digger Danny had borrowed for us turned out to have a duff starter motor (The pic is of me trying to jump start it before we found out the problem).

I've been relocating some old hot beds to near my bender. Over the weekend we had a delivery of manure from Mr Miles our neighbour and a friend of Matt's dropped off a truck load of wood chippings.

These are the hotbeds I moved with Bam Bam's help

The machines are still broken so progress is a bit slow hopefully I'll have some help over the next couple of days and get them finished and planted up. I'm planning on using them to germinate stuff and then to grow melons and other things that like a lot of manure and heat in them later.

New bed in the polytunnel

We had a lorryload of topsoil turn up yesterday (can't imagine anyone wanting to get rid of topsoil). So I decided to get on with making the beds with the help of our Wwoofer, Leia.

Here's a basic mulch bed:

There was already the end of the other bed there to make one end. The ground was already mulched with a layer of cardboard and some straw. We made some holes with a digging pole and bashed in some posts with a mallet. Then we nailed on the planks Danny made.

We put in a 12-15cm depth of topsoil and then about an inch of well rotted manure. Then we put on about 5-7cm depth of good compost. If I can afford to get some I'll add a few handfulls of rock dust and some mycorhyzzal fungi to the bed with some wood ash and some bonemeal.

The temperature is around 3c or so freezing at night. I planted 5 yucca plants (Yet to be identified) that Matt gave me on the northern end of the new herb garden.

I put the morus alba and nigra outside to stratify for 4 weeks.