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Restoring soil structure and simple farming in a wet climate

 
steward and tree herder
Posts: 10161
Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
4823
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Hi Jonathan, I love working in the garden! I'm not sure I think of the veggie patch as an art form, but I love the way it is always changing, and yes the view can be distracting! That is also a mixed blessing though, as the winds we had recently did bash the beans around a bit. They seem to have survived OK though, and the other seedlings are so small as not to have been caught by it.

Almost all my seeds have germinated well. I need to thin out some of the swede (Rutabaga) and beet seedlings, they are growing too thickly together. I did pull some clumps out already - a nice little vitamin full munch for the gardener!

overcrowded brassica seedlings
these swede babies need thinning


I haven't got an up to date photo - I did spend a bit of time yesterday scything the grass on the pathways and using some of the clippings to mulch around the beds and between the rows a bit, especially around the beans and peas. The grains are a bit sparse to see the rows yet, and most of the roots are still very tiny and I don't want to mulch over them accidentally.....but I did mulch some of the swede rows and pulled and cut back the buttercup that was encroaching from the bed edges.

gardening on Isle of Skye
roots bed showing promise


Although I sowed some runner bean seeds last week I think they are probably not going to germinate...I'm assuming that they just weren't warm enough on the windowsill - the weather was pretty rubbish last week. They may not have come to anything anyhow - it is a bit late to be sowing them. The fava beans are doing great and flowering well at the moment - lots of nice colours in the flowers. I need to decide how to select the seeds for next year...I have some new seeds - nice mixes from the going_to_seed UK people which I'd like to keep some from, and I'll probably try and select the earliest set pods in both broad beans and field beans. I'm thinking I ought to decide which size fava is most useful, as small broad beans are less useful, although the more prolific nature of field beans would also be a good thing to achieve in broad beans. I suspect it comes down to whether I will use dried or fresh beans most...

fava beans with white flowers
Happy looking bean plants


I thought I'd lost the flax seedlings, but they seem to be fine now, so I don't know if more germinated or if I was imagining it. I also have what I thought was potato seedlings (from True Potato Seed (TPS) not tubers) although I hadn't sown any, but I'm thinking now that it may be a small self heal plant. It's a bit difficult to find in amongst the beans and i hope I haven't mulched over it!

So the only roots I have going to seed this year are some parsnip which were the sole survivors of the dismal roots bed last year. They are flowering nicely at the moment so fingers crossed I will get a bit of fresh seed from them. I may try a few new seeds as well. There don't seem to be many parsnip varieties available in the UK, so it wouldn't break the bank to buy some.

saving your own parsnip seeds
parsnip in flower


The angelica is also flowering nicely, much to the delight of the local hoverfly population. I'm not sure yet if the seedlings I've got coming up near them are Angelica, or self sown from the parsnip that flowered near there last year.

So the tasks at the moment are thinning a bit and more mulching as the plants get bigger!
 
Posts: 37
Location: zone 7
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Nancy Reading wrote:I'm thinking I ought to decide which size fava is most useful, as small broad beans are less useful, although the more prolific nature of field beans...



Maybe your field bean would be good to reserve for cover cropping roles. As I understand it excess seed would allow you to terminate a cover crop before more seed is produced, allowing more of the fixed N to stay in the soil for a subsequent crop.
 
Nancy Reading
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Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
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Hi Jonathan - I don't think that it would need to be field beans as a cover crop - broad beans would work just as well. Some varieties are allegedly hardy enough to overwinter in the UK. I haven't worked out the timing of sowing them for that purpose yet - the winter is so long and windy that everything tends to get bashed although it isn't particularly cold....

Updating with new pictures of the mulching:
legume_mulched.jpg
Legume bed mulched between rows
Legume bed mulched between rows
mulch_around_swede.jpg
growing vegetables in poor soil
mulch between swede seedling rows
 
Jonathan Ezell
Posts: 37
Location: zone 7
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Nancy Reading wrote:Some varieties are allegedly hardy enough to overwinter in the UK. I haven't worked out the timing of sowing them for that purpose yet - the winter is so long and windy that everything tends to get bashed although it isn't particularly cold....



Field beans might make a good showing there too. Do you think you'll set up a fava test plot (for winter 2025-26)?
 
Nancy Reading
steward and tree herder
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4823
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I'll have to think about it....If I'm following my rotation, I would need to underplant my beans with more beans....or plant them into the grains bed where the beans will grow next year. When I have tried sowing in September before I got quite poor germination (and the birds ate the seed!). Hopefully my seeds will be better now, but I may need to sow in the middle of august to get good coverage. I guess I'm just not sure whether a cover crop is easier than hauling a load of seaweed and bracken. I suspect I am improving my soil nutrients more with the inputs, although the sea weed does come with a bit of debris despite my best efforts.
I ought to try it though just to see what happens.
 
Nancy Reading
steward and tree herder
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Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
4823
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Things are growing so fast I need another update!

The fava beans are starting to set. I love all the different colour flowers I have been getting! With various shades of crimson and purple as well as an all black form and some greyish ones. I need to mark some of them to make sure I get a variety of colours in  my saved seed. Once the pods start swelling I will select some plants to leave as seed plants too, and I feel I will be able to eat some green beans this year at last!

colourful fava bean flowers
Fava beans flowering


I also have the first pea flowers showing - just some white ones, probably low growing early peas..

growing peas on Skye
First pea flowers end June


I'm experimenting with not supporting the peas. I can't imagine that in medieval times they put pea sticks up in the fields so most of the peas I'm leaving to support themselves. Some are interplanted with the beans, so the fava bean plants will have to support the peas as well. I did put some pea sticks in the middle section, just in case it turns out a complete disaster, so hopefully I won't lose the whole crop.

growing peas and beans without supports
Legume bed with partial pea support


I did a bit of weeding in the roots bed - a bit of grass, nettles, creeping buttercup, silverweed, hemp nettle and creeping thistle. I think many of the seedlings have come in with the compost I spread at the start of the year; including fat hen, kale, nettles and what I think are potato seedlings. This year I am only putting kitchen waste and sawdust into my compost, so it should have a lot fewer weed seeds next year.
I'm excited to see everything has germinated to some extent, including some burdock, lots of scorzonera, and some florence fennel. The leeks I transplanted are starting to go to seed, even though the plants are tiny! There is still some comfrey growing in the bed. It will be tricky to get that out without disturbing the plants around it, but I had better do it sooner than later I guess.

growing vegetable son Skye
Roots bed at the end of June


The potatoes are flowering, and the white early potatoes are starting to disappear into the silverweed. I think I could probably start digging those about now. I think I will mulch the maincrops with some more hay from the treefield pathways - I have been able to scythe quite a bit more now, so plenty of cut grass available.

The grain is still looking a bit sparse. Interestingly, the rye seed I was given (from seed grown in Oxfordshire) is already showing flower heads, whereas the oats and barley just look like grass. I got reasonable germination from the flax seed after all and that is starting to stretch, but no sign of flowers.

I've also tidied the real rubbish out of my frugal pallet-yurt shed. Fitting that out for tool storage will be an interesting future challenge.
 
pioneer
Posts: 148
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cat trees urban
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Nancy Reading wrote:Some varieties are allegedly hardy enough to overwinter in the UK. I haven't worked out the timing of sowing them for that purpose yet - the winter is so long and windy that everything tends to get bashed although it isn't particularly cold....



My broad beans were originally bought as, I think Vicia fans 'aquadulce claudia' hardy type some 15 years ago.  The Aquadulce selections are intended to be winter-hardy in England at least.

I've been growing & saving them ever since.  Most winters, at least some of the seeds I sow successionally from early October until the first frost (which is moving later in November) produce plants that survive the winter.

I think twice I've lost all my overwintering Aquadulce .. once because Autumn was so mild they all flowered by late December then got cut down by frost in January. The second more recent loss was winter 2023/4 I think, when it was so soggy & mild that they all rotted.

I can start seeding again early Feb to mid Mar, to make up those losses. This is a central England climate with lots of shelter from winter storms (which are more destructive in the past few years for us than they used to be).
 
Ac Baker
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cat trees urban
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Thank you for those great photos, everything looking lovely & lush compared to our drought-stricken gardens here in England.

Going to see a vicar about potential donated compost from the churchyard maintenance today, which could be very helpful!
 
Nancy Reading
steward and tree herder
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Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
4823
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Ac Baker wrote:I think twice I've lost all my overwintering Aquadulce .. once because Autumn was so mild they all flowered by late December then got cut down by frost in January. The second more recent loss was winter 2023/4 I think, when it was so soggy & mild that they all rotted.


'Soggy and mild' sums it up for us pretty well (add windy!) I think I would get leggy plants that would rot, but unless I wanted to try self seeding (really do nothing bean growing) I think spring sowing is actually best for me. I suspect that autumn sowing would result in happy voles, rather than bean plants here!
 
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