Early Spuds, Broad Beans and Companions



Strong chits on my Red Duke of Yorks

The potatoes have been sitting in egg boxes to chit since early February. The cool entrance porchway seems to have been a good place to do this, as the earlies have developed good, strong chits.
But the big question is, when to plant them out? Some say Easter Friday, but this is clearly ridiculous as that's not even a fixed date. When potatoes first came over to Britain they were, apparently, not well thought of. Devil's food, in fact. Hence the belief that they should be planted on Good Friday. Needless to say, I don't believe in that.
Others say to plant out on St Patrick's Day. For me that's a tad early. I don't want to be spending cold evenings earthing up potatoes to try to stop the frost nipping their leaves, nor do I want to be running in and out with fleece, trying to keep it weighed down and avoid churning it up in the mower.

Almond blossom signals time to plant the Early spuds

For this reason, I go early on the Earlies, but the Mains can wait till Good Friday! (Well, actually about the second week of April.) March 17th is still a bit too early, even for the Earlies. I tend to wait a week or so. To compensate, I have six plants already poking their leaves above the soil in the polytunnel. I've grown these in the soil this year, as previous attempts to grow them in the polytunnel in bags have not gone well, mainly due to difficulties in regulating their water.

Maybe a better sign for me to start preparing the way for the Earlies to go outside might be the blossoming of the almond tree. That's more likely to take into account the vagaries of the weather in any particular year.

It has to be said, another factor in my decision has to be when the school holidays fall. For two weeks holiday gives me a great chance to catch up if I've already started falling behind.
And it doesn't take much for that to happen. My long weekend in Latvia, for example, coincided with a weekend of perfect weather and perfect soil conditions. By the time I'd returned and made up all the work days I needed to, the soil was too dry to rotavate.
But heavy overnight rain was forecast for late last week. This is the very best type of rain for a couple of days later and the soil was just begging to be worked one final time before being planted up.

Now, I had intended just to rotavate a few of the bean beds and a couple of the potato beds. The broad beans were a little overdue to be sown. Having said that, we've still got some in the freezer from last year so there's no rush to produce the first beans.
As it was, I ended up rotavating for nearly 8 hours yesterday. I can't tell you how much my body knew about it last night! The soil was in such good condition that I just kept doing one more bed. I decided to stop when the tank of petrol ran out. An incredible 18 beds later and that finally happened, just as I was finishing anyway.
Mr Rotavator the Motivator had done me proud. As a reward, I have booked him in for a service.

The leeks had to make way for the rotavator,
so I've healed them in until I need them.

I'd worked so hard on this, though, that I never did get the broad beans sown or the Early spuds planted. With rain forecast for midday today, I was up nice and early. My muscles had had a chance to recuperate and I was out into the garden. The broad beans took no time to sow. I used seed saved from last year, Broad Bean Bunyard's Exhibition. Having tried Sutton and Aquadulce, this is the variety that seems to serve me best.

The potatoes didn't take too long either. I don't bother digging almighty trenches. As long as the soil is well worked, I just place my seed potatoes and sink each one as deep as I can get it with a trowel before all the soil falls back into the hole. I then simply go along each row drawing up the earth. I mark everything with a string. It's surprising how, once you've buried the spuds, how quickly you begin to forget exactly along what line they were planted.

The Earlies ready to go in.
I leave as much space as I can between rows and run the rows
so that the prevailing wind can blow down them.
Hopefully blight won't be a problem with the earlies,
but last year it struck as early as June.

As a new precaution this year, I hauled some old chicken wire over the bed until the soil settles down. Otherwise the few chickens who can scale the fence into the veg garden plus the resident trio of ducks and the guinea fowl all do their best to make the earth flat again!

Oh, I should have said. I have settled on Red Duke of York and Arran Pilot for my earlies. The Red Duke of York are my favourite, for they are floury and make excellent chips - there's not many early spuds you can say that about. Arran Pilot are a good, solid early variety and they seem to keep pretty well in the ground in case you've not eaten them all come the summer.

One last word. I used to grow pot marigolds in the trenches between my rows of potatoes. They are a good companion plant. However, I have decided that I'd rather leave nice airy corridors instead. Also, growing the marigolds made it virtually impossible to weed between the potatoes. I know they crowd out most weeds, but our fertile fenland soil ensures that the occasional stinging nettle, and boy ours certainly do sting, can give you a nasty surprise and really spoil your day when you're harvesting.
The marigolds will still find a place in the garden. I'm growing them between the asparagus plants this year in an effort to control the asparagus beetles. I grew tomatoes there last year (another good companion for asparagus) but don't want to keep growing toms in the same spot.

I have also tried planting a horse radish plant in each potato bed in the past, but I find that they do not really get established before the potatoes get dug up. Maybe I should be more organised and plant them two years ahead! I don't think that's likely to happen. Besides, they'd probably get mangled by the rotavator as they disappear below ground for the winter and are only now just starting to poke their crinkled leaves above the surface.

Well, that rain has come and the wind's picked up, which is why I've retreated indoors for a while. But I'm back out in a moment. The poached egg plants have self-seeded from last year and I want to move them, for they are there as companions to the broad beans. It may just be luck, or the exposed site, but I've never had blackfly on my broad beans (you know what will happen now!) as long as I've grown them with poached egg plants underneath. Besides, they look pretty and the bees like them too.

A Veg Plot Full Of Flowers

 

I like my veg plot to look good as well as being functional.

It should be a place to enjoy, both for me, others and the wildlife (though I seem to spend most of my time trying to ward off various forms of wildlife!)

So this year I decided to allocate some beds just to flowers. These have not been overly successful, mostly overcome with weeds before the flowers could show themselves. But I've gradually weeded out the unwanted.

Besides this, I've always encouraged French Marigolds / Pot Marigolds (calendulas) to grow in amongst the vegetables. They make excellent companion plants, warding off all sorts of nasties. So many self-seeded this year that I actually had to transplant some and weed others out to allow enough light and space to the vegetables.

I've planted plenty of African Marigolds (tagetes) too. These are an even better deterrent. I think they may even be keeping the rabbits away from nibbling some of my beds.

When I think about it though, it doesn't really make that much sense. I plant some flowers to keep insects off and others to attract them. Some flowers to attract beneficial insects such as ladybirds, bees and hoverflies. Others to ward off carrot flies, flea beetles, greenfly and blackfly.

Nasturtiums are supposed to
attract blackfly away from the veg crops.



More nasturtiums

 

I think I'd have to be very lucky for the flowers I've planted to achieve the right results, but they certainly brighten the place up.

 

Things to do on a wet day

Thursday 19th July 2012

 Paperwork

Ironing 

 Cleaning

Catch up with the blog

Get wet

Plan for dry days

Cook, bake, preserve

Buy things on the internet

Write lists of things to do on wet days

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomato.
I have abandoned all hope of getting the polytunnel up in the near future.
This is a problem. For the greenhouse, until a couple of days ago, was full of tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers and chillis. And all waiting to go into the polytunnel which is in 28 boxes in the stables!

I just love the idea of loads of colours, shapes and flavours of tomato and pepper, crops which we use day in day out and would use more of if we had them. Tomatoes, especially, are easy to store through the winter, made into sauces or passata.
After a shaky start with damping off and a second sowing, a few seeds of each variety has eventually yielded an awful lot of plants. But stuck in seed trays and not getting anywhere near enough light or heat in the greenhouse, all my indoor crops have been languishing.

Tomatoes and asparagus make
good companions

I reached this same stage last year, when I eventually planted most of the toms outside and crossed my fingers! It worked well and we had a good crop, even if we had to ripen quite a lot hung upside down indoors. Blight will be more of a threat this year, but nevertheless my straggly plants have again been put outside to cope. Already, after just a couple of days, they seem a little stronger, their roots free to spread and their leaves exposed to full light and a healthy breeze.

Tomatoes and gooseberries

like each other too.

I read that tomatoes do well planted with asparagus, in particular that the toms deter asparagus beetle. Somewhere else I read that tomatoes and gooseberries are good companions.

So that's where many of them have gone.

Hopefully when summer comes I'll be posting images of baskets full of ripe, multicoloured tomatoes.

Space in the greenhouse
I started this post with a list of things to do in the rain. I left out pottering in the polytunnel, but in its absence the greenhouse became a rather smaller alternative today. A mixture of peat-free growbags, pots and straw bales now house my crops which will hopefully start to grow now that they have space and light.

And with things a lot less cluttered I'll be able to track down the slugs which have totally decimated every single basil seedling as soon as it has germinated.

A compact space for my greenhouse crops.
But do they have time to set fruit and ripen
after a very slow start?

p.s. A Ray of Hope
When I vowed never again to moan about the rain, along came four months of rain. As I finish writing this post in which I abandon all hope of getting the polytunnel up, what should appear on the horizon but a five day forecast for high pressure, light winds and warm temperatures! When I was a child, whenever I asked "are we nearly there?" the destination was "always just around the next corner." I've learned to wait until I see before I believe.

The Last Frost???

Monday 7th May 2012 (bank holiday)

Scary stuff!
Thought I should dress up for what is hopefully the last frost of the season.

Friday night's promised frost never really materialised, though it did appear overnight on Saturday, but nothing to match this morning's. Hopefully it will be the last significant frost of the year.

I forgot to mention yesterday, I did manage to completely mangle one of the fleeces I had placed over the young potato shoots. I just caught the edge in the mower and this was the start of an unstoppable, cataclysmic reaction which saw the fleece spiral into the mower blades and come out in tatters until the blades eventually ground to a halt. 

Some of the potato shoots got caught by the frost. Not too many, and I will use the opportunity to see how much damage is caused. That way, I'll know for next year how much effort to put into protecting my spuds.

After the sunrise photo, I came back into the house to give the sun a chance to warm the ground. I was delighted to glance at my phone and notice the following two comments posted to this blog. Due my my tinkering with comments systems, I've lost them again, but am copying them here as they really cheered me up and made me feel proud of what we are doing here.

 

Found you yesterday. In the interests of research, bacon for breakfast and roast shoulder of pork for dinner today. We are very difficult to please but your product is SENSATIONAL. Keep up the good work and we look forward to being regular customers. Very Best Wishes ~ Sue and Steve

Have just enjoyed reading your blog.I
It was nice to meet you earlier today. Hope we didn't take up too much of your time. Thanks for letting the girls feed the piglets they loved it.

As I fed the chickens, I was lucky enough to be able to watch two baby Mistlethrushes begging and being fed by their parents. What a lovely start to the day.

Chasing piglets
At 9 o'clock I received a surprise phone call which made the day considerably more eventful.
A while ago a couple of other smallholders had put a deposit down on three piglets and we had sort of arranged to hand them over on Monday 7th May, once they had been weaned. However, we had no further contact and had got the ansaphone yesterday.
Unfortunately, when it comes to piglets, lots of people profess a definite interest in acquiring them, but the promised phone call of confirmation never comes. So I never really felt 100% sure that we had actually sold three.
Anyway, true to their word, Bev and Stuart were coming shortly to pick up their piglets. Bother! I had already fed them. I say this because pigs are ten times easier to control when they are hungry.
I would shortly be faced with the task of catching three of my little piglets. To be more precise, three boars. Ideally I would be able to view them from the back so I could tell what I was catching.

However, just look at the state of their pen after weeks of constant rain. Old clothes would be required!

And just look how wary they look having just been separated from mum. Piglets are not stupid. In fact, they are rather smart, as well as being fast and strong. The extra people, the dog carriers and the second feed of the morning all spelled danger to them. They would not let me get within about 6 feet, and even then they made sure they were facing me. This meant I could not easily tell the boys from the girls, and it would take a most athletic lunge to grab a back leg, the best way to catch them.

Please excuse the lack of action photos, but it was not our main priority!

Fortunately Bev and Stuart had brought a large fishing net with them (note to self...buy one!) We were very lucky. The first three piglets we caught were all boys. They squealed to high heaven, but quickly settled into the carriers and seemed happy enough in the back of the people carrier.

 

The pair in the foreground,
three ganders in the background.

Bev was then kind enough to give us a lesson in sexing birds. Having scoured the internet, there seemed to be numerous different ways to tell boy from girl geese, most contradiciting each other. My birding experience convinced me, from their behaviour, that we had a pair and three younger ganders, possibly the offspring of the other two. This was confirmed on close inspection (the fishing net coming into its own again).

Bev also gave us lots of advice on looking after the geese.

Beetroots and Salsify
By midday we had already done what felt like a full day! But the weather was holding off so I took the opportunity to do some more planting in the veg patches. I finally got round to planting some beetroots, golden, stripy, purple and red. I interspersed them with onion sets, as these are supposed to be good companions. Then into another bed were sown salsify seeds with pot marigolds. A few weeks late, but it should be OK. Known as the oyster plant, salsify (purple salsify, Tragopogon porrifolius ) is a lesser grown veg in this country. However, it grows well and has a pleasant and unique taste. If a few plants are left to overwinter, they produce wonderful, spiky purple flowers in their second year, beloved of bees and hoverflies.

Asparagus

The asparagus bed, weeded and mulched.

I put thirty asparagus plants in last spring and they struggled in the bone dry conditions. However, they eventually grew well producing their feathery fronds late into the autumn. Asparagus cannot be harvested in its first year, since the plants need to build up their strength. A few spears can be taken in the second year (though I will be patient and let the plants continue to build their strength). From the third year on, and hopefully for quite some years after, spears should be produced in profusion. 

This year, the asparagus has been slow to grow. A dry winter, a hot March but then a cool, wet April and start to May have not been ideal growing conditions. But now the spears are starting to emerge in larger numbers. Unfortunately the weeds are growing even faster and asparagus does not like competition. 
So, with the soil wet but not sodden, it was the ideal time to pull the weeds without the need to cultivate too deeply. 
I read somewhere that asparagus loves a mulch of hay, but did not want to do this earlier in the year as it would block the rain from watering the soil. However, this is not now an issue and the mulch will lock in the moisture and hold back the weeds. 

At the end of the day, we gave the four chicklets an hour of freedom in the whole chicken pen. These four chicks have very strong characters and love to explore. Off they went through the long grass with no fear whatsoever. It was lovely to watch them.

A piglet peers through the fence at Guinea Guinea.

The Potager - My Grand Design



One of the early versions of my potager design.
Little has changed, just a bit of reshaping to accommodate the mower
and a couple of the permanent beds swapped around.

The Wheel
Way back at the beginning of last year, I came up with a most ambitious plan to turn a grass paddock into a series of fifty two veg beds. Out in all weathers, I began carving my sculpture into the grass, building mounds of turfs as I went. The whole thing began to resemble some alien spaceship's landing site.

I knew what I wanted to create. Everybody else (apart from Sue) thought I was mad! I guess my plan was too ambitious and my new neighbours did not know how determined I am once I get an idea in my head.

I hired a deturfing machine as my carving tool. The hire shop people neglected to tell me that using this on wet ground was going to require the strength of an ox and the patience of a saint. Not only that, but they fobbed me off with the oldest, most stubborn machine they had.

Anyway, I broke it! Three times.
So they sent me a new one, a better one which they should have sent me in the first place.
I broke that too. Well, actually, it wasn't really me. It wasn't up to the job.

Over the next year, I've steadily chipped away at the job. Each time I need to spend a day absorbed in the soil, when conditions are right, I tackle another bed.

I've abandoned the machinery and just get stuck in with the spade and my fingers, crumbling the soil and picking out the perennial weeds as I go, mostly dandelions and couch grass. Bucketfuls of weeds and the soil that clings to their tapering and creeping roots get thrown in with the pigs, who do a great job picking through, devouring what they like, especially the dandelion roots and clover leaves, and trampling the rest into the soil. The chickens peck all around me, picking off any creepies or crawlies unlucky enough to be brought to the surface.

Finally, after a year of hard work, everybody can begin to see my vision take shape and appreciate it.

The Principles

It's based on a few organic principles, mainly having vegetables growing in individual beds small enough that I can for the most part avoid treading on them and destroying the soil structure.

The whole design is based on a wheel, each quarter for a different category of vegetables which rotate year after year. This system of crop rotation ensures that pests and diseases do not build up in the soil and means that soil structure and nutrition can be managed to suit individual crops. Potatoes need lots of goodness put into the soil, but the same would ruin other root crops such as carrots and parsnips. Beans and peas put nitrogen into the soil. Brassicas (cabbages, calabrese, kale an surprisingly turnip) need goodness and lime, as well as a firm soil. They must be moved to avoid clubroot getting into the soil. 

Veg, Flowers and Herbs working for each other

Along with these principles, I was fascinated with the idea of a potager, an old-style French kitchen garden, usually based on a geometric design, which incorporates flowers and herbs into the vegetable garden. This enables me not only to have a beautiful veg plot, but a functional one too. The flowers and herbs will bring bees and hoverflies into the garden as pollenators. Other plants will attract predatory insects to tackle aphids in particular. Many herbs and flowers will repel bad insects, both with their scent in the air and their chemicals in the soil.

Good Companions, Bad Companions

Nasturtiums bring heat to radishes, marigolds protect against all sorts of insect attack, summer savory keeps blackfly off broad beans, sage, thyme and rosemary keep whitefly and cabbage whites off brassicas, onions and carrots hide each others' smells, confusing onion and carrot flies, even better if a clump of coriander accompanies them and a sprinkling of annual flowers is mixed in too. Potatoes grow well with beans, but hate sunflowers. Beetroot and onions do well together. Nothing grows well with gladioli. Everything benefits from calendula marigolds - grow them everywhere! 

Some may be old wives tales, some may have a very scientific basis, but I reckon that the wisdom of generations of gardeners can't be all wrong! I'm always looking for snippets of knowledge and plant combinations, so please leave a comment if you have any of your own theories or if your grandad (or grandma) passed down any gardening wisdom to you.

All of this requires a lot of planning! Sometimes the companion planting doesn't fit in with the rotation, but there's always a friendly plant to be found. It doesn't stop in the veg plot. Lettuces and strawberries grow well together, and the herb borage is said to give health to strawberries too. Tomato plants will protect gooseberry bushes from insect attack - a great way to occupy some of the space needed between to gooseberry bushes. 

The  disadvantages
It's difficult to devote exactly the same area to brassicas, potatoes, roots and legumes. Some vegetables don't fit neatly into these categories, such as squashes and sweetcorn. I did think about having a six bed rotation, to include a section to leave under green manure for a year and another for miscellanous crops.
The small beds neat a lot of management. Not for a tractor, or even a large rotavator.

To get round this, for my sins, I have another veg plot, an open area of ground. Many of the same principles are applied and it gives me somewhere to grow the crops which won't fit in otherwise. 

So there you have it.

Vegetables by design.