Restoring soil structure and simple farming in a wet climate

I'm feeling pretty chuffed to have (almost) all my crops in the ground now. Yesterday I had a particularly good day and finally managed to get my potatoes planted.
These were last because I needed to do quite a bit of bed preparation. The first step was making some stick bundles to make a drain down the edge of the bed.

Stick drains laid out

Since the area sort of slopes into this corner, I felt that this drain was actually going to be quite important. I managed to intersect into one of the other drains on the outside of the growing area as the final part. Then I had to find enough soil to get a reasonable depth. The turf here was less than one spade depth in the main, so I have extended the path area to double up the soil depth.

Collecting Mulch material and extended path

I also cut some dock and nettles from elsewhere on the tree field and near the house to give the potatoes a bit more nutrients. I had already brought a bit of comfrey down, and the original bed had been mulched with seaweed. I had four different potato varieties to plant - the Skye blue, Maris Piper and pink fir apple grown and saved from last year, together with a new one - an early blue potato, which is supposed to be blue throughout. I'm not sure whether its a salad type or floury potato, time will (hopefully) tell. The soil was still very blocky in structure - the original turf was still very evident. The downside of this is it leaves cavities between the blocks where slugs and mice can get in and potentially the potatoes may not be able to bridge. When I see the potato leaves emerging, I'll go over and earth it all up and hopefully that will help. Having just planted the potatoes, it's impossible now to tell where the tubers are at the moment and I don't want to damage them digging around.

Finished potato bed

The grain in half the bed sprouted within a few days, but the other half's looking quite sparse. I'm not sure whether it was the barley or the oats that are slow, I'll find out when they crop I guess. It maybe that the birds preferred one lot of grain. Both were reasonably fresh seeds, although I did find some moth in some of the oats. I've since put most of the rest in the freezer to get rid of the bugs. I might be able to use some grain as a decoy to distract birds during the critical pre-germination period in future....

newly planted fava beans

The peas and beans that I first sowed are doing fine. I've moved the repurposed builders fence for the peas to climb up and stuck in some twigs as well, since the fence is nowhere near long enough for the whole bed. No sign of the other plants that I sowed as a second batch yet. The seeds sown in pots are also ready to be planted out now. I've planted and watered in the beans, but have yet to do the peas. I scattered a bit of cut grass around them on the basis that slugs happen and they may prefer dead material to the beans, which will be slightly stressed for a few days from the transplanting. There appear to be several gaps in the germination, and I suspect that some of the seeds I was using were really a bit old. Some were seeds from my larder, so I'm not too surprised about this.

looks like you have been working darn hard, well done.  is that an afternoon shot down the drain ditch, just wondering what the aspect is. hopefully an east west with westerly slope as opposed to a north slope?

Hi James, Thank you. I don't seem to have overdone it though, no extra aches or pains today.
The photo is almost exactly due East, and was probably taken in the middle of the day. The general slope of the site is just slightly North of East. I have tried to compensate for it by making the beds themselves oriented E-W with each sloping to the South. Originally I called them zigzag beds, but have settled on solar aspect beds now. I explain it a bit more at the start of the thread and on this post, but I reckon I may have 'moved' my location to be more similar to the central belt by doing this. It was originally closer to the borders, but I've reduced the slope quite a bit for practicality when I combined two beds into one this year. I should do some soil temperature measurements to see if the effect is quantifiable - thanks for reminding me.

I've been keeping track of this project in about three different places - this thread, a hardbacked notebook, and my phenology spreadsheet. Just as well, since I sometimes forget to note things I've done and have to catch back. In this instance I didn't note here that I did sow my roots bed (8th May). I was pleased at the time I did this, since I had a nice shower of rain almost straight away that watered the seeds in nicely. It's been a little dry since, but wet enough that I haven't felt the need to water. Carrots apparently need to be moist for three weeks to germinate, but they seem all to be popping up now.

roots seedling germination

Since I had such good success with adding a little compost when sowing the seeds last year I spread a couple of bags of old compost (not used, just sitting around since last year) and raked in at the same time as I sowed the seeds. There are, of course, some weeds germinating as well. I think the majority at the moment are going to be hemp nettle, Galeopsis tetrahit, which I have had consistently coming up where I planted the trees. It is an annual, so should be pretty easy to get rid of. It's a bit early to tell really though. So far there are very few of the parsnip germinating, but some of these still have the seed attached to the first leaves, so are easy to spot. There is also quite a bit of fodder radish (or possibly mustard, either left over or seed produced by last years' plants, which will be fine for additional mulch/soil building. This seems to be coming up everywhere, but is easy enough to pull out, so not really a problem as such.

I planted out the peas that were left in their pots and have mulched along the legume bed in between the rows, with stinging nettles from up near the house. This will hopefully help kickstart the soil biology being high in Nitrogen, along with reducing weed burden in that bed.

Peas and beans all set to grow

I've also been adding the ash from our wood stove, since I worked out that the legumes would appreciate the Potassium and any pH raising effect the most. I need to get some more pea sticks sorted out from this season's coppicing, to give the peas and beans some support.

I'm now starting to think a bit more about what to do with the surrounding area. I have extended the comfrey bed a bit more. This is to the South of the growing beds and I'm hoping it will act as a weed barrier as well as providing nutritious mulch in future years.

Newly planted comfrey area

There is quite a bit more grass area inside the dog resistant fence to the East and uphill of the growing area, which I need to find a purpose for. It has a few small rowan trees in, and there is also one globe artichoke plant that seems to be doing well. I could just leave it and mow it for mulch, although this grass isn't very lush. I could plant more comfrey. I could also plant other perennial vegetables: more artichokes, maybe try an asparagus bed. I'm open to suggestions here.

Path and potential ?

I have been scything the paths in the tree field. Partly to make it more pleasant to walk around - helps avoid ticks and wet legs, and partly to generate mulch material. Some of the lush grass I used to mulch the pea and bean rows some more. I also found plenty of sticks for support. I wonder what people used to do in medieval times for their peas. I can't imagine doing this on a field scale is that practical....

Legume bed with pea sticks and grass mulch

I was so excited to see the first fava bean flowers starting to open - even more so when I spotted this red one. I know I had some purple flowered beans, so at least one has germinated and is early to flower - a good start. The stem is very red too, but I noticed the stems of some with white flowers are quite red too, so this isn't necessarily an indicator of red flowers. I planted some beans which have reddish seeds as well, so those may have more normal white flowers.

Crimson flowered broad bean

The weather has continued to be absolutely beautiful. You forgive Skye all the wet and wind when you get perfect days like this. However it is starting to get a little dry so I watered the roots bed fairly thoroughly and sprinkled cut grass over the surface to try and protect it from drying out again too quickly. The seedlings are still very small and still germinating. The grass dried out and I sprinkled it quite thinly, so I don't think it will harm the little seedlings at all. The forecast is still to be dry for the next week or so, which is lovely, but I'll probably need to water again. One downside of my growing area location is that it is two thirds of the way down the hill - about 100 yards from the river, which is the nearest water. I then need to carry a full can back up to the growing area - about 8 times to get a reasonable soaking done! I'm happy that all my species are germinating well though. The weeds are a bit bigger - some fodder radish and the hemp nettle seem to be the predominant ones, along with some rye grass that survived from last year. I'm not worried about weeding them out just yet - I'll wait till they are big enough to get my fingers round to pull out, or possibly just snip them with scissors.
The carrots from last year in the not-very-lazy bed are nearly in bloom - even the smaller ones are sending up flower spikes now. There are quite a few aphids on the larger ones, but they don't seem to be causing any harm, so I'll just keep an eye on them. We don't tend to get much greenfly here (too windy generally) and I've not seen ladybirds, which are well known aphid predators, either. I do get a lot of hoverflies (syrphid flies) which are also good predators (and pollinators) as well as lacewings, so I'll see what turns up. The other nasty I saw was a couple of "cuckoo spit" bugs' balls of bubbles. These are larger sap sucking bugs, but again the carrots seem not to be suffering, so I'll leave them be.

Greenfly on carrots

A week on and it looks like the greenfly on the carrots have just about disappeared. I guess trying to eat what hoverflies like too, is asking for trouble, when hoverflies eat you too. I actually took some video down the hill in the hope that the audio would come out (not listened to yet). The trees are humming with insects! The hoverflies also love the pignut flowers.

hoverfly on pignut flowers

Unfortunately it looks like the aphids have found the fava beans! I took a (pretty bad video of them 'dancing' which was rather cute: https://youtube.com/shorts/AH1l5m7-pjQ. It's pretty unusual for me to see many aphids, but there seem to be clouds on them on the birch trees for example. I think it must be the slightly warmer and drier weather we've got at the moment. So far I can't see that the beans are badly affected, so I will do what seemed to work on the carrots - nothing. It is supposed to be black fly that attacks broad beans and the remedy is to pinch out the succulent young tips after the first few lots of flowers have set. Looking at the beans it seemed to me that the transplanted beans seemed to be suffering worse than the direct sowed beans, so I did a survey of 20 plants:

measurement	% on direct sown beans	% on transplanted beans
bad Aphids	15	50
all aphids	45	65
cuckoo spit	50	90
flower development	55	70
other bugs etc	10 plants with other creatures	2 plants with other creatures

Included in the "other creatures" were both goodies and baddies: there were several beetles, some of which I think are beneficial, but at least one sap sucker, a couple of caterpillars and a tiny lacewing making a meal of some aphids :).
This table doesn't quite show the difference in the flowering. Although the direct sown had fewer plants with noticeable flowers, more of these were actually open including the crimson flowered beans, which I'm rather enamoured of!

Crimson flowered broad bean flowers

The transplanted beans weren't particularly cosseted. They were sown at about the same time as the direct sown ones as a back up in case of total loss. I used a 50:50 garden soil to (bought) compost and several seeds were sown to a pot which were left to grow outside near the house where I could keep an eye on them. They are slightly taller and the lower leaves slightly more yellow than the direct sown ones. I suspect the additional aphid infestation is due to a number of factors: lush growth due to better soil; transplant stress due to being uprooted and replanted; in the ground less time for a balance of beneficial insects to help counter the attracted aphids. They do have more flowers coming, so it will be interesting to see if this seems to make a difference to the yield. I'm hoping not to have to transplant in future of course.
The weather is continuing warm (for us) and dry. We had just a little rain last night, and I'm torn as to whether or not to water my roots bed. On the one side I want to get a reasonable amount of the seeds to produce plants to get a variety to cross pollinate. On the other hand I want to create a seed mix that is robust to varying conditions. This summer is pretty dry, next summer may be wetter and favour a different mix of plants....On the whole I'm leaning towards watering since at this stage what I need is variety - I can select for different conditions from my seed 'grex' when I get some.
The first of my potatoes are showing leaves. I think these are the early purple ones - the foliage is certainly dark!

first signs of dark potato foliage

A couple of weeks on and it's the first time I've been happy that the rain has started! It's got a bit cooler too. So far we've had several soaking showers. Not enough to really penetrate the ground, but enough to keep the seedling roots happier, and meaning I haven't felt the need to try and water again.
All the potatoes are through and doing well. I'm thinking of mulching with bracken fern, since that is big enough to be worth pulling now. I may not mound the soil up, since the clods are still fairly solid and I don't want to damage the potato stems.

Roots bed showing clustered germination

The roots are a bit clumpy in their growth. The swede (Rutabaga) have grown well and there is also good germination of the carrots and the parsnip. However there is not much sign of the leeks growing generally. I'm wondering if they have been grazed off by slugs, so have put a couple of the cut off plant pot rings in a few places to see if the leeks will appear. The weeds were big enough to do a micro chop and drop using scissors around the roots seedlings. I wouldn't want to do this on a much bigger scale, but it was OK on a smallish bed like this.

micro chop and drop

Since I did this the plants have grown quite a bit. I'm worried that the Swede will crowd out the other roots, and whether I should thin them a bit. There are also more weed seedlings germinating since the rain showers - such is life.
The greenfly have virtually disappeared from the fava beans. Doing nothing seems to have worked again! There are some beans set and other plants are still only flowering, or not even that yet. There is obviously quite a spread in the time to harvest of the different bean varieties. I am a bit disappointed in the number of beans set so far, compared to the number of flowers that there were. There seem to be a lot of flowers that didn't set and I'm not sure why. It may be that the sort of insects that pollinate the flowers are missing. I haven't seen any bees on them for example, although I do seem to have plenty flying around on clover flowers elsewhere. It may be a bit more exposed in this area: The trees have not grown well (one of the reasons it was turned into a vegetable growing area). Or it may be that I just don't have enough insects that specifically like beans. Hopefully both of these should get better year on year as shelter trees grow, and insects that like beans now have beans to feed on....
I did another insect survey of the plants, just over two weeks since the first aphid survey:

measurement	% on direct sown beans	on transplanted beans
aphids	5	5
cuckoo spit	10	0
total # bean pods set	28	20
other insects	25	5

Edited to add: # is total number of noticeable bean pods on the plants counted - not the % of plants with beans. Some plants have none, some have up to 4.
As well as more of the lovely crimson beans, I noticed at least one with more sooty flowers, so that is another variation in the plants.

Sooty flowered bean

Looking at the other insects on the beans, I'm thinking that fava beans are one of those plants that have the extrafloral nectaries that Helen was talking about on the Garden Master course. There are dark spots on the bract-like growths at the base of the leaves on some of the bean plants, and I have seen several insects apparently eating there. I had thought they were sucking sap, but on one leaf I'm sure I saw a drop of nectar. It is so small though you'd need a macro lens to photograph. This is a rather blurred photo of a tiny wasp like fly eating there:

wasp on extra floral nectaries?

There are some heads developing on the grains bed. As I suspected it seems to be the barley that suffered bird predation. There are several heads developing, but it looks like much of the grass in the barley half is either rye grass, or other weed type grasses. Only one or two oats have flower spikes as yet.

incredibly whiskery barley

I hadn’t realised it had been so long since my last update. I guess I haven’t had to do much to the area – just a little mulching and checking, a little bit of chop and drop. I’m pretty pleased overall with how things have gone so far, although haven’t harvested much yet – this year’s crop is aimed at learning and seed production.

Growing plot from the North East corner

The potato plants look pretty healthy. I have mulched along all three rows with a thick layer of bracken, with a little chop and drop of rye grass that was growing in the row. I didn’t get round to planting any of the other replant perennials here. Potatoes make such a good smothering crop, I’m not sure a good polyculture will be easy with them, at least in a smallish area like this. I’m thinking I can probably start digging the early blue potatoes fairly soon. The plants look a little sad as if they are running out of steam, but haven’t started flowering yet. Both the main crop varieties (“Skye Blue” and Pink fir apple) are flowering nicely…..

Potatoes mulched with bracken

I’ve got ‘neeps! My Swede (rutabaga) are the pride of my roots bed. Several of them are already a decent size. Unfortunately they do seem to have crowded out the carrots and parsnip a bit, although there are decent plants of those, they are still very small with no sign as yet of the roots bulking up. I’m also afraid there are no leeks at all now. I did get some germination, but the seedlings have gone, presumably eaten by slugs.
I have grown leeks in the past. Normally one would start them off in a seedbed and transplant into the final growing position when they are a fair size. I need to work out a way of managing the precocious growth of the swedes, such that they don’t swamp out the leeks and other roots. I was hoping that the upper growth of the roots would help to blanch the leek stems without earthing up or transplanting, but it looks like it is going to be a bit more complex than that. Hopefully I can get a balance between the different root varieties such that the carrots and parsnip have more space. Ideally the leeks would also get more space and survive, but I think next year I’ll have a wee nursery bed so that I can protect a few leeks to transplant, rather than lose the lot again.

Neeep!

Mulching this bed has been awkward. I have done a little chop and drop again – hempnettle seems to be the main weed, but it isn’t possible to mulch in amongst the seedlings very easily now, so most of the biomass has been placed at the edges of the bed.

Roots polyculture bed chop 'n drop

I’m pretty happy with the growth on my peas and beans. This bed has been easy to mulch too. As well as chop and dropping most of the weeds on the bed, I have also mulched with some prunings from tree branches overhanging the pathways in the tree field – stripping the leaves off and stuffing them under the pea vines and bean plants. There does not seem to have been any damage from the aphids, which are no more to be seen, however the beans haven’t set very well. I should have plenty of beans though for seed, if the ones that have set come to be harvested safely. It looks like I may have trouble with mice (or more likely field voles), since several of my pea plants have been severed at the base, leaving the tops wilting and the developing pea pods still green. I’ve picked what I can from those plants, and maybe they will dry off and be viable seed. It is mostly the plants at the eastern end that are affected – probably those closest to the vole's nest. The rest of the plants continue to flower and set, so we’ll see whether any more plants are eaten.

pea plants wilting

I’ve had very few ears of barley develop on the very few seed that survived to germinate. I collected two ears that had fallen off possibly due to wind, and some of the other ears seem to have disappeared completely. I suspect mice again, since I think birds would have stripped them in situ rather than removing the entire ear!
I have also got a little problem with the oats, several of which have what I believe to be loose smut (discussed here). This fungal disease leaves nothing but black dust in the seed heads, which then infect new developing grain and up to 25% of next years crop. Apparently some varieties of oats are more resistant, but I’m picking off as much as I can of the infected ears anyhow to try and reduce the incidence as much as possible. Again it is difficult to mulch in amongst the grain, so this bed can really only be mulched at the edges and out of the growing season.

loose smut of developing oats head

I'm hoping to prepare the final section of the Southern bed before the end of the season, but keep getting distracted!

The summer is drawing to a close and I'm starting to think about putting the growing area to bed for the winter. Next week I will probably dig the potatoes. They got a little blight on the leaves - the "Skye blue" seemed a bit more robust to it than the pink fir apple, but I cut the foliage of both down to the ground and earthed them over to protect them a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't sure what to do with the foliage - given that it has a bit of blight evidence- so I just put it downhill of the growing area on a space I'm trying to clear for companion planting perhaps.

starting to clear the potato leaves

The Skye blue potato again has set loads of berries. The ones I kept last year were lost (our mastiff decided to play with the container they were in and spilt them). I'm thinking I may try and germinate some true potato seed and see if I can get either a good strain, or just potatoes from seed! I gather the seed actually increases viability after the first year (I'm sure I read this on cultivariable) so I'm thinking to sow them in 18 months..

a pity these aren't edible!

I also picked all the remaining fava beans. The mice had started to eat the pods, so I decided that picking them would at least give me some harvest. The beans are drying off indoors (I'll post a picture of those later, I can't seem to find it just now). I cut all the bean stalks off just above ground level, but left the roots in the ground.

this is the damage that rodents started to make

Since the mice had been climbing the oats stalks, I also cut all the heads that looked like they may have started ripening. It's only a small patch, so I just used my kitchen scissors - no need for a combine yet!

Good news is that I spotted some fox scat. At least I'm pretty sure that is what it is. I thought at first it could be a bird pellet, but I think those are normally near roosts and this was just on the top edge of the bed where the barley should have been. It had quite a bit of fur and metallic blue beetle shells in it. I couldn't see any footprints, or signs of digging there, so the fox hasn't been as destructive as the dogs. It may have been left as a territory marker perhaps.

fox poo with fur and beetle shells

I'm going to post separately about my roots bed. I'm not sure what and when to harvest the turnips. The parsnip and carrots are still there - some of the parsnip have pretty good foliage, but generally they were swamped by the swede (rutabaga)