Potatoes and Black Plastic

For all of last year (and a fair bit of the year before as well) I have been fighting an uphill battle against the weeds on my plot, specifically the grass.

I have regularly spent upwards of five hours strimming, raking and clearing the grass only for it to spring back to three feet deep almost overnight.

Last year my time on the plot was mostly limited to Saturdays as I look after my 2 year old grandson Jack on Sundays, so time spent cutting the grass was time I really couldn't afford to lose. I am determined to make be more organised this year, so I have invested in another roll of thick weed fabric and used it to cover the areas on my plot that I haven't managed to get around to as yet. I am hoping that this will effectively smother the majority of the weeds and grass, giving me more hours to spend on the rest.

Purple Sprouting

January King Cabbages under netting

I have covered just under a quarter of my plot with the weed fabric
which will give me some much needed breathing space to get the beds weeded, composted and ready for planting. Despite the new season being upon us, there are still a few crops still in the ground from last year.

I still have four or five purple sprouting broccoli, and about the same
January King cabbages. The leeks from last year are also still looking ok, but I won't know until I pull them if the stems are still firm all the way through.

Last few Parsnips

There are also a few parsnips still waiting to be lifted, but as they store much better in the ground I will be
leaving them there until they are needed for a specific meal.

Leeks nearly ready for harvest

This growing season has well and truly started with garlic and Snowball onion sets being planted into one bed. I don't plant my onions out to over winter as the first time I tried that I lost over 80% of them, so instead I use a modular seed tray and put each bulb into its own section along with some compost and water them in well. Once their leaves have reached 4-6 inches I them transplant them into their final positions in the beds.

I recently went to a Potato Day at the Hulme Community Garden Centre where they had upwards of 40 different varieties of seed potato for sale.

First and Second Earlies

This year I decided to play it safe and went for varieties that I have had before and gotten good results from, plus a couple of new ones. I have gone for six varieties again this year. I chose two First Earlies (Pentland Javelin and Colleen), one Second Early (Bambino), one Early Maincrop (Mary's Rose) and two Maincrops (Sarpo Mira and Pink Fir Apple).

Maincrops

The newcomers amongst all these are Colleen and Mary's Rose. All the potatoes are chitting away in egg boxes in the polytunnel and should be ready for planting by the end of March. In the past I have planted both into the ground and also into buckets with varying success, and this year I have decided that the majority of my potatoes will be planted into buckets, bags and other containers.

This is because I have a limited number of beds for veg, and by taking up three or four of them with potatoes I am really limiting my available planting space for other crops. Also, I can place the buckets on the black weed fabric that I have just set out so I will effectively be utilising more of my plot, and I can space them more widely that I could within a bed as that caused a bit of a problem last time due to the foliage overlapping adjacent pots making it difficult for them to be watered as much as they needed.