Written by Gavin, Sustainable Farming Assistant
I was at the farm on Wednesday this week, the main jobs after packing the stir fry bags being sowing broad beans and spring onion seeds directly into the soil out at field C, I think it was, close to the farm gate.
I’m afraid I committed my usual sin of overcrowding the seeds again – this time because we picked up the wrong measuring tool – the one we started out using was the garlic-sowing measure, not the broad bean one, so we sowed most of the bed far too close together… let’s hope it doesn’t hinder their growth too much. The measure we should have used gives you a couple of rows around four or five inches apart followed by a gap of a couple of feet before the next paired rows. I really should have known, or questioned it, as I was sowing broad beans the correct way only a few weeks ago!
The beans in the close, paired rows are sown diagonally to each other in a kind of zig zag formation, allowing them (I think) to support each other to some extent as they grow (again, I’m sure the professionals can set us straight if I’ve got that wrong). It’s quite a nice motion to sow the beans, as you push them down into the soil to about the depth of your first thumb knuckle, and no need to cover them over (though this week the soil was fairly dry, so it the holes did fill themselves in).
Next it was spring onion seeds – two kinds: the regular ones we all know plus a red variety we haven’t tried before. Although the seeds are much smaller than beetroot seeds, the direct-sowing technique is the same: work your way along the bed using a hoe to mark straight, shallow guidelines across the bed at intervals of about a foot. Then back you go and sprinkle a bit less than a thumb-and-finger-pinch of seeds as regularly as you can into each guideline. That done, gently rake over to cover with soil – using the back of the rake is a good technique to make sure you’re not disturbing the soil so much that you leave lots of the seeds on the surface, which would be the danger if you raked with the tines in the soil.
I forgot to mention that before the sowing, Bart, Chris, Kirsty and I were getting stuck in to the massive compost pile, barrowing loads of it onto the beds. We raked the piles of compost fairly evenly across the beds so that, when Bart chugged along the tractor, rotavating the compost into the soil, it wouldn’t end up with patches heavily composted and other patches lacking compost. It was quite satisfying to see the colour of the composted beds deepen and get richer as the tractor did its work. (See the pictures)
Towards the end of the day, Bart was showing me some problem tomato seedlings in the potting tunnel – I’m not 100% confident that I took in what the problem might be, and the possible remedy, but here’s what I think I gleaned: on Sunday we apparently had a ‘drying-out’ incident, and if you look closely at the seedlings, which are in a module tray, you’ll see many of them of seem to have thinner, slightly wasted stems just where the stem emerges from the soil. Now in tomato A&E, they’ve been placed in a water-filled tray so that water can enter from the bottom as well as from the top. But I think there is also a plan to pot them up in such as way that the thin stem bases are covered by soil, hopefully allowing them to recover. I may have completely misunderstood this, though!