Bed #2 Retrospective for 2014

Bed #2 was devoted about 50% to alliums for the first half of the year. The photos below show an experimental patch of Sonora wheat in the foreground. Moving beyond that there are volunteer Monticello poppies and chamomile under the overturned nursery flats and shallot sets to the left of them. The far end of the bed is devoted to onions and garlic. That was the contents of the bed through May.

January 23

February 22

March 27

April 28

May 11

May 28

By the end of June I had harvested half the wheat patch. One side of the patch produced beautifully and the other side almost nothing, I kept waiting for the heads to fill out and they never did. I think the productive side benefited from the mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial bacteria that I had inoculated the previous veggies (eggplant) with.

July 2

All the onions had been lifted and most of the garlic. The garlic was replaced with a double trellis of Petaluma Gold Rush beans. I had also cleared out the volunteer chamomile after harvesting about a pound of flowers (dry weight). That area had been transitioned to broccoli and cauliflower which were well on their way.

July 2

The entire wheat patch was cleared out by mid July and half that area had been planted to melons. The other half of that area had to wait until I had recovered sufficiently from back surgery to resume bending and lifting.

July 30

I started harvesting the Di Ciccio broccoli on July 13 (2 days after my surgery, I guess I couldn't wait to get back to the garden!) and the first head of Amazing Taste cauliflower was harvested on the 24th. You can see that by July the weather had reverted to our usual cool foggy "summer" conditions after an unusually hot June.

July 30

By the end of August all the cauliflower had been harvested, the Petaluma Gold Rush beans had grown so thickly on the trellises that the breeze threatened to knock them over, and I had set out some brassicas for fall and winter harvests. There's Romanesco broccoli and Tronchuda Beira cabbage/kale on the back side of the bed.

August 30

And I set out more cauliflower seedlings in front of the beans.

August 30

The melon vines were threatening to overrun the path.

August 30

By mid September the Petaluma Gold Rush Beans were maturing and the vines were senescent.

September 22

The Di Ciccio broccoli was still producing successive harvests of shoots.

September 22

The Lacinato kale that went into the garden a few weeks after the other fall/winter brassicas was catching up.

September 22

The fall planting of snap beans were fighting some sort of disease, fusarium possibly (that may be what hit the wheat also). The Tuscan melons were dying before most of the melons matured but the Charentais melons were thriving and producing a generous crop of sweet juicy fruit.

September 22

October ushered in some hot weather with highs in the 90ºF's. The brassicas wilted but pulled through ok.

October 3

The heat helped to dry the Petaluma Gold Rush beans on the vines while the dying leaves rained down.

October 3

The Di Ciccio broccoli kept going, the Energizer Bunny of broccoli.

October 3

The warm weather continued through October into November which helped the runty little late planted celeriac and celery to get established.

November 4

The brassicas enjoyed the warmth also.

November 4

November 5

The cauliflower came in all at once in the first couple weeks of November and I finally cut down the dead bean vines.

November 14

The weather continued mild into November so the brassicas grew by leaps and bounds.

November 14

I pulled the struggling snap beans and cleared out the patch. That is now occupied by some very late planted chard protected from the birds under some water bottle cloches. There's a glimpse of the celeriac and celery, growing...

November 29

The Romanesco is becoming immense!

November 29

I set out an experimental late planting of escarole and radicchio at the far end of the bed under the cloches.

November 29

What a lovely surprise, by mid December the celery actually got to be large enough to start harvesting on a cut-and-come-again basis. The celeriac has plenty of top growth but the roots are still small.

December 21

The escarole and radicchio are filling their cloches but are not yet large enough to harvest.

December 21

Here's a look at the bed on the last day of the year. The Romanesco is starting to show signs of forming heads. I hope these immense plants produce heads commensurate with their size.

December 31

Everything in this bed is doing well except the Di Ciccio broccoli, it has finally lost it's oomph, the new shoots are much smaller and more much more sparse and it has hardly any leaves left. I think it's time to pull it out. Those four plants produced 40.7 pounds of shoots from July through December, I think that's pretty remarkable.

December 31

In 2015 this bed will be transitioned to saladings, cutting greens, root vegetables and a new patch of strawberry plants.

Happy New Year!