Making a Seed Bed



Seed bed containing Purple Sprouting Brocolli



So, what's a seed bed? It's a small area of land that's used for sowing slow growing veg such as cabbage, purple sprouting brocolli etc., directly into the soil before moving them on to their final growing positions.

Why bother? Quicker cropping veg such as lettuce or radish can be planted and harvested, giving you a more productive use of space.  Alternatively you may have something growing in the bed that you're ultimately planning to plant your cabbages into (such as peas).

It doesn’t need to be very big – about a metre square is sufficient.  It does need to be in an open, sunny position though to give the seedlings the best start in life.

The soil should be well prepared – light, well drained, free of weeds and stones. Check the pH – neutral is best between 6.5 and 7.  It doesn’t need to be too fertile either as seeds contain everything they need to germinate.

To get a fine tilth suitable for sowing seeds, rake the soil gently backwards and forth when it’s neither too wet nor too dry.  Tiny seeds will need a finer tilth than larger ones.

Cats seem to love rolling in seedbeds so consider enclosing the area with wire netting until the seedlings are larger, or string black cotton over the bed to deter birds.

Sow the seeds in drills (see picture above) and as they start to grow either move them to a ‘holding bed’ (like a seedbed only larger) or transplant them (move) to their final positions.

Before moving them, water both the seedbed and the soil into which the plants will move to.  “You’d never move house before having a cup of tea.”

Note: Avoid planting calabrise in a seed bed as it does not like to be transplanted.

Why we all need a bit of horticultural therapy…

It quietens the mind, it soothes the soul, and it exercises the body.

Its grounding. Watching plants grow, leaves opening and reaching for the light, roots’ anchoring to the soil… it’s calming.

It’s impossible not to feel at peace listening to the birds singing, watching the insects rushing around, busying themselves, feeling the breeze upon the skin.

When the sun shines in the garden everyone is happy. The dogs flop out, the children play quietly, the cattle quietly munch away at the grass. Even the hens are quiet, nestling down in the dust.

Today was a catching up day and I can now relax, content with a days work done, until the weeds grow back and more seeds need planting.

Today I used my spanking new propagating bench that Mr G has been busying working on and basked in the 40oC heat of the polytunnel.

Seedlings were potted onto larger pots, new seeds were sown, tomatoes and peppers were planted, early potatoes were earthed up and maincrops sown. It's been a good day.

A therapeutic day away from all the hussle and bustle of life.

I know I'm lucky to have somewhere so quiet to garden in... but whether you take a walk in a park, sit on a chair in a town garden or just pot some plants up in a window box, take a minute to relax and look at nature working around you, and despite you.

Everyone needs a bit of horticultural therapy now and then.

Wednesday Wiggler ~~ Green Dock (or Sorrel) Beetles (Gastrophysa viridula)



http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachel_s/

 I've chosen this little green beetle as a Wednesday Wiggler because our garden is currently full of them.

I've been trying to identify and hunt out information on them over the past couple of days so that I can determine if I need to worry about these little bugs eating our veggies.

They're a metallic green in colour, about 4mm long with the females slightly longer at about 7mm. The female also has a swollen black abdomen prior to egg laying during the mating season which lasts from March to October.

She lays clusters of tiny yellow eggs on the underside of dock leaves, laying up to 1,200 eggs in two to four broods a year.

The adult's life span is only a couple of months but they can hibernate over winter.

As their name suggests Green Dock Beetles feed almost exclusively on dock and sorrel but if these are not available to them or are in short supply they will eat from the cabbage family (brassicaceae) as well as the borage, violet and buckwheat families. These choices would not be high on their menu though as their larvae will not fully develop if they feed on these plants.

So it would seem that we have a perfectly good reason for NOT ridding ourselves of all the docks in our garden and may have to forget about growing sorrel.

There does seem to be an alarming amount of eggs but as long as the beetles have a good supply of their favourite leaves (and I can attest that there are plenty spreading their seeds in the fields around us too) in theory we needn't be overly bothered by green dock beetles.

This is a great example of why we should encourage all types of wildlife into our gardens to prevent a build up of any one type of insect. The green dock beetle's natural predators are insectivores (such as birds and frogs) and parasites.

By regularly feeding birds, planting hedges, building ponds and not keeping our gardens overly tidy we can encourage a diverse range of wildlife and create a natural balance.

If you have a smaller suburban garden you may be thinking that's all so very well but not feasible. I suspect however, that the little green beetle may be more rampant in a rural garden due to the abundance of food sources in the countryside.

Source: http://www.insectoid.info/beetles/

What's growing in the Sewelly garden in April?

It's been a while since I updated the blog on the goings on in our own veggie garden so on one of the warmest days so far this year (today it reached 35oC in the polytunnel) I took a few snaps. There's not much happening above ground at the moment but hopefully lots going on below.

This bed is now full of early potatoes (Orla variety) that were chitted and planted on the 27th March.

This particular 2.5kg bag were certified organic (bought from Highbank Farm Shop in County Kilkenny) and has filled this bed.

A slightly larger bed has been prepared ready for the main crops that will be going in within the next couple of weeks.

(For more info on potatoes see here.)


The next bed contains the overwintering onions and garlic that I wrote about here.

They're coming along well now and the main task over the coming weeks in this bed will be to keep the weeds away as they'll be competing for space.

You might notice the stones here.... it doesn't matter how often I pick them up, they keep coming back!





Mr G was outside weeding the rhubarb and old strawberry bed yesterday.  Now it's clearer we can add some well rotted manure, giving the rhubarb a bit of a well needed feed.

The leaves of the rhubarb are being nibbled at by fluorescent green beetles that are also using them as a mating ground (cheeky devils).

I haven't identified them yet but am working on it... watch this space (and if anybody knows in the meantime please leave a comment).

This is the rest of the old strawberry bed that we're chipping away at.  Our neighbours cattle reached over and ate half of it last year (even cheekier!) but as this bed has now been in production for a full three years we'll be collecting the strawberry runners ready to move to a new location and composting the old plants.

See here for a post on looking after strawberry beds.



This is the 'best' strawberry bed that didn't need too much work to help it along this spring.  We just removed all the dead or rotten foliage, trimmed off any old runners and generally tidied up.

Hopefully we can look forward to another lovely crop of Cambridge strawberries this summer.

We'll net them once the flowers start to form to protect them from birds and give them a seaweed feed too.

This is the new shallot and onion bed that we planted sets into on 16th March.

We sowed Red Sun and Sturron but have half a bed empty so buying some more sets is on my to do list. You might have noticed that there's not a lot of difference in growth between these and the overwintering ones. We'll be harvesting both beds at about the same time.

One thing we've learnt from previous years is that we eat lots of onions!

The curly kale is starting to go to seed now so we're letting it go and will save the seeds.

We've been harvesting the leaves from these plants since August and they're one of our favourite overwintering plants.

They're a very hardy crop and easy to grow and manage.

See here for more tips on growing this fab leafy veg.

Mr G planted a few fast growing radishes alongside the slow growing parsnips on the 22nd March and it's a race against the slugs.

I'll be heading out with my torch over the next few evenings to see if I can catch a few of the little blighters!


I'm coming to the conclusion that purple sprouting broccoli is for the patient gardener.

Sown last April or May it's only just starting to produce now.

However, it longevity is helping me out as I've earmarked the space it's growing in for a carrot crop later in the year - so as these plants are looking too good to compost I'm happy to leave them there and they'll prevent me from planting up the space too soon!


Inside the polytunnel seedlings are starting to appear. I took a chance planting early inside this year but I'm always experimenting to see just how early we can get away with planting in there.

The mangetout planted directly on 25th February has been a bit patchy germinating. That shouldn't be a problem though as I've planting a few more seeds this week giving us a successional crop.




The lettuce has all germinated and I planted some more this week.

There's no sign of the basil (I knew I was pushing my luck there), and the french beans again are only just germinating.

We have lots of seeds on the go on windowsills and in the tunnel... here are some peas I'm starting off in the tunnel ready to plant outside when they're a few inches tall.

You can see how quickly they dry out in the tunnel.... they were soaked yesterday when they were moved in there and just 24 hours later have dried out significantly.

Again we like to plant a mixture of transplants and seeds to give a succession of crops rather than a glut.

We've also planted beetroot, spinach, scallions, thyme, carrots and parsnips directly inside and out.

There's still lots to do over the coming couple of weeks. April is said to be the busy month for good reason!

Along with getting lots more veg sown and planted our priority over the coming weeks is to sort out an irregation system to/in the polytunnel.

As you may have noticed, despite liberal quantities of organic matter being added to the beds to help with drainage, it gets desperately dry in there and in the summer months we could be watering two or three times a day, putting any ideas of weekends or holidays away completely out of the question.

We have two large builders water tanks and some old well pipe ready to go, and we'll be running some guttering off the house to capture the water. I'll write a post once it's up and running.

Pea and bean crops - do they contain enough nitrogen to benefit anything else?

I just thought I'd share this fabulous photo taken by one of the Goresbridge Community Gardeners, James Burke of Bigger Picture Web, who captured a picture of nitrogen nodules on a field bean I took along to show the group last week.

Over the winter months I've been growing field beans in one of my veggie beds as a green manure. Green Manures are used as a means of adding organic matter back into the soil, and are particularly handy for people who're growing veg and don't have a ready supply of organic matter (compost or manure).

As members of the legume (pea and bean) family, they're able to make their own nitrogen and are known as nitrogen fixers.  Legumes store it in little nodules (as can be seen here) and once the nodules have separated from the plant or the plant decomposes, the nitrogen is released and is available to other plants.  Plants from other vegetable families get their nitrogen from the soil, usually from plant debris (or from fertilisers).

Green manures from the legume family are therefore great to grow before anything from the brassica family (cabbages etc) as the big leafy green crops will relish the additional nitrogen and are unable to make it themselves.

*It might surprise many gardeners who are familiar with crop rotation that botanists now believe that the root nodules accumulate half of the total nitrogen and that it only becomes available to other plants when the nodules are removed from the plant.  This only happens when the plant is severely stressed from shade or drought or when the root dies.

Also, when the plant is young about 40% of the nitrogen is in the roots with the rest in the foliage and stems. Once the plant has flowered the reserves of nitrogen in the roots drop to 3-6% with 8-10% in the leaves and stems. The remaining 70-90% is stored in the seeds and seed pods.

What this means for most of us hobby gardeners is that the roots of the pea and bean crops that we have allowed to flower and fruit for the cooking pot are unlikely to be of any nutritional benefit to the veg following them in our crop rotations as is currently believed.... green manures are the key.

* Source Chris Beardshaw - How Does Your Garden Grow