A busy day. Weather forecasts suggest some blustery days to come. I need to get the fifth bed planted, and as today is my 30th wedding anniversary, I don’t have long in the garden.
I put the autumn raspberries in yesterday, six of them, at about 18″ x 24″. You can see the nearest pair have already begun to grow next year’s canes.
These have been in pots for about five years. I don’t know the variety, but I hope if I get the time to check back records.
The next job was to fill the remainder of this 4 foot by 12 foot bed and then to plant peas and elephant garlic.
This whole bed has been filled with very poor quality (in a commercial sense) compost. Really no more than semi-composted vegetable matter, a lot of which was shredded cherry wood, enhanced with a home-made nitrogen rich fertiliser.
This is good for the raspberries, which will be there for some years. It will continue to rot and provide nutrients and moisture-retaining humus. How well the peas and elephant garlic will do remains to be seen.
After treading down the compost, I transplanted the peas – a round pea called Douce Provence, which I sowed November 2, three to a module. As you can see, these have grown well, on a south facing windowsill. Of the thirty modules (90 peas), 82 show good growth, with another two or three that might amount to something.
Do I need to worry about these winding taproots? I don’t know. I haven’t had much success with peas in the past. This is my year of learning about peas. But I believe soil quality, and protection from vermin, are my priorities.
So that’s it. Pleas panted. Sorry, Peas planted. Elephant garlic plumbed in at about 18″ spacing and a couple of inches depth, and I’m off to clean up and celebrate.
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