First Peas

I broke new ground this year, in an area that I know is largely shaded in summer by a large tree, and dried out by its roots, but when youre limited to where you can dig, you do the best with what you have. The area used to be a vegetable plot, many years ago, presumably when the trees were smaller, so thats where my landlady wanted me to use. First, I deep dug the bed, cutting out roots and incorporating any vegetable matter I could get my hands on to about 1.5-2 feet down, and as I did this after the first rains had softened up the soil a little, it wasnt too hard. When I was finished, the surface was a couple of inches higher than previously. Into this, I planted:
16% radishes, then 16% carrots, then 16% mesclun. On the remaining 50%, a row of peas, a row of spinach and a row of lima beans. (I had wanted to use fava beans, but couldnt find any seed at the time). That was about Christmas.

Radishes (Cherry Belle): Grew great, some good roots, some useful only as salad and soup leaves.
Carrots: Miserable. Today, they are still small, about an inch high. Other carrots, including come colored ones, sown elsewhere earlier are bigger, so I'm leaving these in for now in hope. I'm not convinced these are best started in midwinter though.
Mesclun: Doing great; have had a few haircut harvests already, and expecting more. I'm being careful to cut off flowerheads that are appearing on the rocket and a spiky green. I have also transplanted some lettuces and rocket from here to another bed where they will have more room to develop.

Peas: Doing fantastic. Grew very well in the warm, sunny weather at the start of Jan, and are now flowering heavily. The first pea appeared this week, and has grown from 0.5 cm to 1.5 cm in just a few days.
Lima beans: Disaster; nothing came up. More than likely way too cold for germination.
Spinach; growing very slowly; about the size of corn salad now. Hopefully this will provide a decent crop in spring though.

Because of the failure of the Lima beans, I have transplanted some of the mesclun here, and stuffed in a line of garlic cloves; these are all doing well.

One useful point of note: In the winter, there is no shortage of light in this plot as the leaves are off the trees, and there is plenty of moisture from the rain. I can expand this area usefully, at least for winter crops.

The image above shows the pea half of the bed; To the right are the peas, then in the fallen leaves, some tiny spinach, then the line of garlic (the grassy leaves) together with some large mesclun plants, and you can see a kohlrabi plant I stuck in at lower left (a vegetable I bought but didnt use in time, so I stuck it in outside to regrow).