Did you amend the soil in the beds between seasons Kris? I'm suspecting like John C Daley that the rust is only cosmetic and nothing to worry about.
Personally I'd probably just top up with good compost and carry on with the existing beds (but I'm frugal like that). Replacing the beds seems a bit like hard work. Also you can surely buy quite a lot of organic veg for the cost of new raised beds and soil! An alternative is to empty the beds out and tip the soil on the ground. Again top up with some compost to kick start things in the spring.
It will probably help to get better responses if you tell us your climate area. Many places have had a pretty hot summer, so it may be that the seedlings died of drought. Although tough, they may need some help getting established.
My husband and his best friend used to fight as to who would get to use the PET at lunchtime. We fished one out of the skip (dumpster) at college nearly 20 years later - still had it's dustcover and cassette unit.
Similar to Nicole's hackysacks (which I had to look up as I don't think they made it this side of the Atlantic!) I made some little woollen balls for a first birthday present for a friend's baby. Nice and soft for indoor play.
knitting in progress
finished present
Made from wool and stuffed with wool fleece they can be composted when they reach the end of life.
OK, I think I'm going to make this a last post for this thread. Although I'll hopefully still be around if someone wants more details on the past. I'll start a new thread for the ongoing garden area - hopefully with a bit more success next year!
During September I harvested the bere barley trial grain. There were three different bere barley and a control which turned out to be a 2 row barley! I harvested the different barleys on different dates however, as they appeared to be ripening at different rates. The 2 row barley did not live up to it's early promise as it seems to ripen rather late in the season, and I was getting more losses from mice then. Out of interest the yeilds were 420g (end Aug) 710g (7th Sept) and 219g (15th Sept) for the bere barley and 350g for the 2 row barley. That was the weight of the ears before cleaning and threshing. The actual yeild will be a fair amount lower. The last harvested bere had a lot of wastage. The crop had lodged badly and many ears were spoilt in the damp and had even started to regrow. The control was still nice and upright. Both still had quite a few green ears, so the yeild might have been quite a bit improved in a better summer (we've been relatively cool and damp)
the last bere barley and 2 row control at harvest
This weekend I harvested the last of the crops, such as they were. The peas and beans were not a success. They were sown a little late this year, and the bed was badly overrun by creeping buttercups. Most of the field beans were still looking healthy at harvest, and even still trying to flower. The pods are all a little green, but the beans ought to be well enough developed to be viable seed at least, even if there are fewer than I sowed! The peas were very poor. I cut off any bits of plant that had pods on and picked over them indoors but there are very few viable seed there.
pathetic legume harvest 2026
I was mostly trying a new mix of field peas without any supports, but they didn't get above the buttercups. The voles or mice seem to have had a feast though, so there were peas there, just not harvestable. I'm going to have to think about this a bit more!
the remains of a mouse pea feast
I thought that I'd lost almost all my potato grown from TPS, but having gently dug at the bottom of the trench there were quite a few mini potatoes in the end.
tiny potato plant
Only two of the plants still had foliage, so either the plants had a tendency to being early (which is quite a good trait) or the tops were eaten by slugs or succumbed to blight (which is bad). All the tubers seemed to favour the pink fir apple in appearance, being white or pink rather than purple. I selected 12 of the bigger tubers to keep and try and grow on next year and made a unique potato salad for my lunch with the others! All very tasty.
selected min tubers to replant
I've got a bit of work to do to prepare the beds for next year. Really the weeds are winning at the moment, the nasties that got introduced with the compost last year didn't help. The buttercups and silverweed do seem to be swamping things a bit and I need to manage them better. At least I can eat the silverweed!
A graduate scientist turned automotive engineer, currently running a small shop and growing plants on Skye: turning a sheep field into a food forest.
good for growing prizewinning parsnips perhaps, or dioscorea tubers!
