Red bed

Going to do a section on each of the raised beds in my garden. As the red bed was the first one put in place, filled and planted, it was the obvious place to start.

This bed has the veg from the onion family which for me include garlic, red and white onions (funnily enough), scallions (spring onion) and leeks.

As the bed was only created and filled in Feb of this year - the garlics were a bit late being planted. I had them stored in the fridge to give them the frost kick-start.

The leeks were the last veg put into this bed - just last weekend. I had grown leeks from seed, but hadn't read up properly on the best practice for growing them, so ended up using store bought plants from B&Q.

The onions were planted early March - both the red and the white - the white took off very quickly, but the reds are now nearly catching up.

In the bed I have my scallions all sown in a line - they are in the bed about a month. Since they I watched a great video on the GIY Ireland website which gave a great suggestion on how to grown the scallions(spring onions). There are also many more excellent videos on their site on growing your own vegetables.

http://www.giyireland.com/videos/detail/spring_onions

Basically you grow ( as I have prepared here indoors for my next batch out) about 8 seeds per module in the seed tray. You do not thin them or separate them, you just plant out the whole grouping. Then when its time to pick - you pick the whole group similar as to how you would buy them in the shops. Inspired idea!

So far I haven't had any issues or work to do with this bed bar hoeing and rock picking ( was too much in a rush at the start to sieve the bed, but its definitely a job for next year!). My garlics are looking a little yellow, but I think this has been due to the bed drying out rather than rust - will wait and see.

I also grew some garlics on a flower bed between some roses and these were planted out in Nov/Early Dec. These had the dual purpose of growing garlic and also helping prevent some diseases and pests on the roses.

I have some onions and a handful of leeks growing in the soil. The onions were planted about two months after the onions in the raised bed. They are only planted about 3 weeks when this photo was taken. The leeks are at the far end in the shadow- only planted a week.