What is happening in the MBs' vegetable garden?

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I feel completely embarrassed that a whole month has gone by since I last posted! In my defence Mr MB & I were at Gardening Scotland for 6 days up on the north coast of mainland Scotland for 5 days and also had workmen repairing the flat roof of the house!

Most things are looking good in both the moon bed and the control bed. The hames on the potatoes in the moon bed are significantly bigger than those in the control bed – whether this will mean a bigger crop is a matter of wait and see. So far we’ve lifted one 1st early Coleen and had around 1 kilo of potatoes from it. However, this was not from the moon bed or the control bed but another garden where we are growing veg!

The moon bed broad beans are taller than those in the control bed and seem to have more beans on them. The peas also look better in the moon bed.

We started some of our leaf crops off in the propagator and then grew on in the greenhouse before planting out. The difference in size between those that were started off in trays and those sown directly into the ground is considerable… We will certainly be starting off as many of the brassicas as possible in seed trays and the propagator next year

These are the ones we started off in the propagator

Whilst these were sown directly into the ground a good month or more later. Notice the use of unwanted CDs DVDs to keep the birds away!

The onions are okay – nothing to write home about but okay. The huge disappointment is the carrots, normally we have no problem growing them but this year, for whatever reason, in both the moon and control bed germination has been poor. It is really puzzling us as we covered the area where they were to be planted with the 6 metre mini poly. tunnel for a few weeks prior to sowing and, when we did sow we covered immediately with fleece which we left on for weeks. We’ve never bothered to do either before and, I doubt we will do so again.

The raspberry canes have all taken and David has maximised use of space by planting some additional dwarf beans in between them. These are not part of the trial but are several varieties of Italian beans including the Borlotti bean with it’s amazing red/yellow pod. These can be eaten like a normal dwarf bean or allowed to dry and just the beans used. Until I saw all the different varieties of beans on the stand at Gardening Scotland I had no idea just how into their beans the Italians are, apparently they eat them far more than we do!

We’ve already harvested one complete row of spinach and re-sown it, spinach is one of those crops you can keep sowing for another month or so yet.

Just remember to water everything really well whilst it is so dry!

I’ll put up the information on what to do when in July tomorrow.

• 2 Jul, 2010
• 6 likes

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