Week 12 peas onions and harvesting PSB
A great week this week at the Vale Grocer and Eat Your Greens, with so much going on..(i think this will be a recurring a theme until November! Haha!)
Muck and Compost delivered - this year I've decided to invest quite heavily in our soil. Our yields outside haven't been as good as they could have been and I think kthat has been partly to do with the soil. So this week, we've uncovered some of the beds and dug out the docs, dandelions and hog weed which somehow still manages to grow, and covered them with either compost of well rotted muck depending upon what we're growing there next. (muck for brassicas and courgettes/squash and compost for onions, leeks and lettuce.) The amount spent on buying this in easily outweighs the expense of paying somebody to shift homemade compost which we would soon use and actually still needs to be turned a couple of times to get the temperature up to try and kill the weed seeds etc. Making our own compost is something I need to get much better at!
Mulching - No dig. So as per my mentors Charles Dowding and JM Fortier, the compost/muck is spread on top of the beds and then let the worms pull it down. The brassicas are mulched in situ using the flail mower... this is inside the polytunnel. Turn your volume down before hitting play! It's quite amazing how much work and effort this saves. Noted that we're using fuel - but over the year we use about 15litres of petrol in total..
Sowing/ planting out. I managed to get some centurion onion sets from Graham at Greenfingers which was a relief as the ones I'd ordered in November - I was told were now out of stock! Grrr. I also have a load I'm growing from seed so will be interesting to see how these all go. The garlic is taking nicely, which it didn't do last year so hopefully...
Beetroot sown in cells of 4 per cell as per Charles Dowding suggestion! Kelvedon Wonder Peas sown in cells, Courgettes potted on, Lots of herbs sown and Sprouting peas seem to be working quite well. First Early potatoes are in.. It's weird to think they are in and the Purple Sprouting Broccoli that will go in after them is already being sown in the greenhouse. I hope I've got my dates right!
Harvesting - a great harvest this week with over 20kg of leaves and harvested!! Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Chard, Spinach, Kale,