4-Bed Rotation System

In anticipation of preparing my allotment I've been looking into how the 4-Bed rotation system works. The idea is to have four beds and rotate the veg grown in them every year. The aim is to avoid a build-up of pests and diseases specific to certain vegetables.
Now the key is in the word rotation, rather than just swapping vegetable beds around, as this video from Gardener's World explains.

In a nutshell the order of rotation is:

1. Potatoes. Plant in well dug soil with lots of manure.
2. Legumes (peas, beans, etc). These will deposit nitrogen into the soil by storing it in their roots so make sure you leave the roots there at the end of the season.
3. Brassicas (broccoli, calabrese, cabbage, cauliflower, etc). These love the nitrogen that's been left by the legumes.
4. Root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, etc). These don't need huge amounts nutrients. Any excess will just go into the foliage and not increase the size of the root.

Onions and other alliums like leeks and garlic can go in with the legumes as they like the same kinds of conditions.

Each season you move the vegetables round in order, with the potatoes following the root vegetables after the ground has had a good dig and more manure.

Well that's the theory and it makes sense on paper. I wonder how it'll work in practice!

Some more information on 4-bed rotation is here.

The Greenhouse Effect

The people we bought our house from were kind enough to leave their greenhouse complete with aluminium racks and even an old wireless thermometer which looked like it hadn't worked in ages. After fitting new batteries to the thermometer it burst into life. There should be another part to it so that the greenhouse temperature can be monitored from the comfort of the house. We've never found this part - maybe it died some time ago. Anyway the main bit is working and the other day it reported that it was 25°C. Toasty!

Over the winter the only thing in the greenhouse was a couple of bales of hay for the guinea pig. Obviously that had to change so just over a week ago (Sunday 22nd Feb) Megan and I set about planting our vegetable seeds. So far we have planted some of the following:

• Courgettes (Astia F1)
  
• Broad beans - Dwarf type (The Sutton)
  
• Tomatoes (Shirley F1)
  
• Salads made up of lettuce, land cress (which is like water cress only ... on land) and spinach
  
• Bell Peppers of various types although they were all in one packet. Hmmm.

The first to show their faces were some of the lettuce plants. Well done, we have a winner!

With the salad plants I'm going to (hopefully) plant some every 3-4 weeks so that there is a nice steady supply. Once large enough they will go outside in a planter. Probably to be eaten by slugs. I think the pecking order will be slugs, us, then Patch the guinea pig.

This last weekend I planted some cucumber (Telegraph) seeds - all five of them! According to the packet, if trained properly they could reach 50cm! Which just begs the question how exactly do you train a cucumber?

I still have French Beans to plant but according to the packet it's still too early - even in a greenhouse. What do they know - I may just put some in pots just to see ...

Welcome!

Welcome to Matt's Patch. The aim of this blog is to be a kind of diary of all the activities that we go through making our garden into a place to be enjoyed by all the family. Hopefully it will also be somewhere I can make a note of the things we learn along the way.

We moved in to our house in the Midlands in September 2008 and over the winter we have not had much chance to do a lot in the garden. However, now that the snow from a month ago is just a memory and the weather is beginning to warm up slightly, things are on the move. The sap is definitely rising!

We have a lot to do and it will take a good while to do it. There are lawns on all sides of the house, and several beds and some large trees on the boundaries. Oh, and a greenhouse that I think is great but Mrs. Matt is not too keen on.

So this blog will document all that happens in "Matt's Patch" from cutting down trees, turfing lawn and growing vegetables.