Thursday 16 June 2016

More Planting Through Plastic

Down at the bottom of the garden, there's a surprise waiting for you. 
It's called weeds! 
Not quite ground force but we can get a lot done between us! 
The veg garden is looking pretty good at the moment but where the 16 beds ends it turns, rather abruptly, into a jungle of weeds. It's not something I'm proud of and it's certainly on my list of things to do! 
On Sunday the girls and I decided to tackle a very small part of it. We dug out a strip for a new bed. Pulling out all the nettle and reed roots that had taken hold and made a big pile of them. This took some time, and for the girls a complete change of clothes - well it was rather muddy! Fair play to them though they stayed for ages and worked hard, we frequently had to stop and look at worms and bugs, but I didn't mind that!  

Singing was optional! 
I've decided to make these beds narrow than my others. The main garden has beds divided into 4ft strips, the idea being that you can reach the middle from both sides. The trouble with this is you find yourself stretching all the time. Narrowing the bed down to about 30" means I can reach to the other side crouched on one side of the path. 

 I laid the slabs on the bare earth so I now had a new 10ft by 30" bed marked out, with hopefully most of the perennial weeds removed. I then added a couple wheel barrow loads of well rotted sheep muck and mixed it in before covering the whole thing with weed membrane.
A few nights later ( a dry few minutes) I got the blow torch out again (like I did here) and burnt in holes for plant to be planted. 
It's a bit of a mixed bed with some plants I'm experimenting with. 
In it is some Vietnamese  coriander, (which I bough again at Hellens Festival at the weekend as my other didn't make it through winter or go to seed last year), some quillqina (a mexican herb I'm trying to grow), some Peruvian Black mint (another herb I'm experimenting with), a giant Achocha (just to see how it does out of the greenhouse - this will need some support though!) and four chilli pepper plants (just to see how they perform outside as well. 

Hopefully planting them in this way will give me some low effort herbs and flavourings, whilst keeping the weeds at bay and reclaiming some more of the veg garden. 
I've started on another bed below this one last night in which I intend to plant my chickpeas in much the same way. I then think the area below that I will just cover over to suppress the weeds for a few months then sow a green manure for over the winter. 

Anyone else growing though plastic? Anyone else have much luck with growing things that are traditionally greenhouse crops outside in a UK type climate, like chilli's?

12 comments:

  1. The first time I ever grew chilies it was when I had an allotment 25 years ago, they did so well I had baskets of them, took them to the local Indian and we had a meal in exchange for the chilies, never had a crop like it since :-)

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    1. That sounds amazing! I could do with a crop like that every year! If I could grow them outside it would mean I could grow so many more. Maybe under row covers would be a the way forward.

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  2. such a great way for kids to grow up, learning valuable life lessons and great work ethics. You are such a good dad, well done mate

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    1. Thanks Tricky, They seem to love it and are desperate to come and help.

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  3. My son works for a farmer. They planted a field thru plastic.

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    1. I think it might be the way forward. I think I could even grow through plastic under low tunnels and grow chillis and things outside that way. Might eb worth me thinking about more if I want to up my production.

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  4. Sweet potatoes are often grown through plastic, if you like them.

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    1. I love them but our season is quite short. Again with the above idea it might work.

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  5. You could market that plastic! I have a friend who's using this system this year, so I shall be interested to see how he gets on.

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    1. I think someone has beat me to it I'm afraid. I'm about function over looks so if this works I'll be doing it more even if it doesn't look amazing.

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