Leaves and manure brought in

We got about a ton of lovely well rotted manure in late last year and in addition to this I have been an extremely avid autumn leaf collector (the men from the council kindly bagging them up for me and leaving them for me in nice blue bags on the roadside!). I did get some odd looks from other ADI’s as I pulled up in my tuition vehicle and stuffed it full of council refuse!

200 Seed potatoes that are now in the “chitting”  room!

On January 23rd we went to the London Potato Fair, now conveniently just down the road, and got 200 seed potatoes to grow on the plot that will later be our ‘Fruit, Herb and Flower Plot’. We ended up opting for:

40 Duke of York
First Earlies and waxy – Hope to enjoy the early harvest as salad potatoes and also roast them with saffron to compliment roast chicken and roast beef dinners.

50 King Edward
Main crop and very floury – Used to love them mashed as a child but not eaten them since going organic and now looking forward to trying them for Pommes Dauphinoise too.

40 Sarpo Mira
Have enjoyed these before and they really ARE blight resistant and we thought they tasted great too.

40 Isle of Jura
Though aimed at the commercial pre-packed market these are said to have a very good flavour and also have good resistance to blight, slugs and even eelworm!

10 Colleen
An Irish first early variety we have never tried before that is often grown organically so we decided to give it a trial.

10 Salad Blue
Finally decided to have a go at eating blue mash via this early main variety. The blue pigments are anthocyanins with strong anticarcinogen properties so it’s more than pure novelty.

10 Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy
The only known variety to show blue, red and white colouring in the skin and it has an interesting history so I thought we’d try it out.

Solent Wight garlic was sown last week
Finally got the garlic planted and hoping to keep back the best bulbs to plant next year. Garlic has to be just about the easiest crop to save your own seed from of them all! Well, that is what I am hoping anyway. Aiming for very little expense each year to grow all the crops we want.
Check out The Garlic Farm web site for oodles of great info on so many aspects of garlic; growing it, cooking with it, health benefits etc. And if you haven’t yet got your garlic to plant you can read about the different varieties that they grow at The Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight and then order them direct from the web site or other sites or you may find them in your local garden centre.
As for the products on the site I can definitely recommend the ‘Garlic Twist’ and also the rubber garlic peeler, both quite useful if you often cook with garlic (and I have tried out many garlic gadgets in my time). I can also testify that the stainless steel ‘soap’ does actually work, although I don’t bother to use it that often. I’m not saying that the best prices are on this site but I do love these products.
I also have my eye on that lovely glass chopping board. I may treat myself to that soon and design my new kitchen decor around those colours, even though I don’t need another chopping board!
And if you’re as mad about garlic as me you may be interested in the Garlic Festival in August.

Next on the ‘To Do’ list

Last week I got almost half the plot prepared for the ‘tatties’ having laid down the gypsum and then lots of those leaves I collected and then adding a good layer of that manure over the leaves. We do need more manure and could do with a lot more so planning to hire a 3.5 ton tipper truck very soon which should mean that for under £100 we will be able to get another 5 tons of the lovely rotted manure to finish off the plot for the spuds and also fill all of our yet unfilled raised beds.

So once we have all the manure in and laid over the gypsum and wet leaves we are ready to surface plant our spuds and reclaim the sitting room for ourselves! But that still leaves us well behind. Still don’t have many of the seeds that should already be sown in modules in the greenhouses!

Surface growing potatoes

I love this method. Way less work, same yeilds AND less slug damage to the tubers!!! AND less problems from volunteer plants the following season too! It is so simple. You just place them on top of the prepared soil and cover them with straw. As the plants grow you add more straw rather than ‘earthing up’ making sure that no light can get through or the tubers will be green. When they are ready just lift the straw and there they are, all ready on the surface for you to pick up (some will have worked their way under but they will be very shallow). You can take a few tubers from a plant and then replace the straw and leave the rest growing if you want to. The slugs don’t like the straw.

Need to try to squeeze in the time somehow!

Must get all my seeds ordered as soon as I can afford to place the order and get moving or we’ll have nothing to go with the Pommes Dauphinoise.