The Big Potato and Strawberry Experiments

Over the recent Bank Holiday weekend I was looking forwards to getting onto the plot and really getting stuck into the multitude of tasks that have built up.

Unfortunately things didn't quite go as I had planned, and I was only able to get down there on Monday, but I still managed to get plenty done.





Potatoes in several different containers

The first earlies that I had put into buckets on Easter Monday (April 5th) had taken almost four weeks to show themselves, but since then have gone from strength to strength as you can see from the picture to the left.  I have since managed to get all my first and second earlies out  and also my early maincrop by the middle of May (Bambino, Pentland Javelin, Mary's Rose and Colleen).  Some are in buckets and some I am trying in old compost bags for the first time, which should be interesting to see how they do.

 

I still have my maincrop (Pink Fir Apple and Sarpo Mira) to get in, but I am not too worried about them right now.  They will use up the remaining space on the weed fabric where my wood pile is on the picture above.

 

Last year I got a home-made cold frame off FreeCycle, but I only started to use it this year.



I have used it to harden off my cauliflowers, onions, lettuce and spinach, and apart from a couple of days when some rather large slugs took a liking to a few of the spinach plants it has been quite a success, even after some strong winds ripped the lid clean off - thankfully the glass didn't break.

The cauliflowers from the cold frame have now been planted out - I am spacing them slightly further apart than I have before as I found that they grew together quite quickly with the result that some heads were fairly small.

I have planted a total of 12 seedlings approximately 18 inches apart (last year was 12) and they have been netted against thedreaded cabbage white and also slug pelleted. so hopefully they will all survibe to give us a nice crop come autumn.

Also planted out this week, but from the greenhouse was the sweetcorn.

These were sown onto a root trainer, and from the 33 seeds planted 32 germinated and were planted out (2 were in a single cell), so that's not a bad success rate :)  The variety is Conqueror F1

The bed that they have been planted into has had a top layer of compost added, but no other nutrients and I will add canes and other supports as necessary thoughout the season.

Jack's Patch

My 2 year old grandson has recently started coming to the plot with me on Sundays, and so I have given him his own little raised bed to plant what he wants.

So far he has 4 Little Gem Lettuce, six Malabar Spinach, three Red Sun Shallots and eight strawberries.  There are also two buckets of potatoes, one Pentland Javelin and one other (not sure which variety)

There is plenty of space left for a pumpkin or two as well.

Strawberry Heaven

Last year most of my strawberries were planted straight into the ground and gave a good yield, but I did lose quite a few to slugs and birds.

I experimented with planting them through weed fabric in the smaller bed, and these seemed to have less losses so I have repeated the experiment on two out of the three strawberry beds this year.

Looking at the picture I have just realised that I have forgotten about the hanging baskets between the beds - they also need replanting.


More Strawberries

I have a total of 29 plants in these two beds, with about another 35 in the long bed at the back, and another 24 which I bought from Aldi earlier this season and are still waiting to go in.

The raspberry/blackberry bed to the left in the picture was going to be cleared and also turned over to strawberries this year, but I think I may have left it just a little too late as there is far too much growth going on over there, and I am a bit worried that I might end up killing them off if I move them when they are in full swing.

Broad Beans

I planted out half a bed of broad beans aroung the middle of April, and they have all put on quite a bit of growth since then

I used two varieties this year, Crinson Flowering and Bunyard's Exhibition.

Because I haven't kept on top of the grass at the back of the bed the Bunyard's have suffered a bit from slug attacks, but a scattering of pellets seems to have held them back for a while until I can strim the grass one night this week.















How did it get to the end of May so soon?

I can't believe that we are now almost at the end of May already.

Seed potatoes waiting to be planteed

It feels like I have done almost nothing on the plot, there are plenty of beds that need topping up with compost, half of my seed potatoes are still waiting to get planted out and the majority of the seeds I had planned to grow this year are way past their optimal time for sowing.  I was going to lift the strawberries and replant them through weed fabric, but that should have been done whilst they were still mostly dormant back in March.



Finally up and ready for use

We weren't even able to inspect the bees on time, so they swarmed and we lost half of them as we couldn't collect the swarm.

There have been some high points recently as well - the greenhouse that I got from FreeCycle is finally up and fastened securely to the flags that make up its base and being well used.

Jack's Patch on April 26th

My grandson Jack has come to the plot with me a few times and has got his own bed for planting in right next to the seating area where he can be looked after.  He is only just two, so his helping involves jumping in muddy puddles and throwing compost and soil over himself at every opportunity, but it does lift my heart to see him having such a good time outdoors.

Shallots, Little Gens and Spinach planted

I am hoping that by having his own growing space and encouraging him to plant what he wants he may be more inclined to taste fruit and veg he might otherwise not try.  I can live in hope, anyway.

The first early potatoes that I put in on Easter Monday have finally shown their heads and are looking to be strong plants, so I hope that I can get a decent crop from them when they are ready for harvest which should be around my birthday, the first week of July.

It remains to be seen if their somewhat delayed start will mean that they are not ready for a few weeks after this - I will wait for them to flower and the foliage to wilt before tipping them out.

I'm sure that Jack will give me a helping hand and will appropriate most of them to take home to his mum for dinner.



Tomatoes, Celeriac, Chillis, Pumpkins, Courgettes,Shallots

I have rescued the shallots from the old polytunnel where they have been sat since October last year and pretty much neglected.

A couple of the tomatoes I started at the beginning of March have also survived and have been potted on along with some little gems, spinach and celeriac, and I bought a small pack of cauliflower plugs from Aldi which are doing well in the cold frame.
I have also sown far too many courgetes and pumpkins (in the plastic cups to the right of the picture) , but I wanted to make sure that I had at least one pumpkin for Jack's Patch.  As of this morning I have three pumpkins and eight courgettes :)

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.

Mid Season Planting

The current weather has been brilliant for our crops, but unfortunately it has also been equally as good for the weeds.

Flag Iris looking good

As the weeds have grown where they wanted to, and not where we have placed them then they have an obvious advantage over our crops.

Sad reminder that nature tends to win

The natural cycle of things also cannot be stopped.  Earlier this year I planted out some swede seedlings that I had bought at the end of last season but didn't manage to get into the ground until March.  This weekend I had to admit defeat - every single swede had bolted and was producing yellow flowers which meant that they would never bulk up to produce a crop, so they all had tocome out.

I replaced them with six seedlings of cabbage 'Primo' that I had picked up at the plant sale at the Uppermill Museum a couple of weeks back, and they have joined the three surviving Brussel Sprout plants that were already in the bed.  As you can see from the picture above, one is doing really well but the other two have suffered with the slugs and are really weak.  I hope that they survive as it is a bit late to start more from seed.

On a more positive note, the white onions, shallots and Japanese onions that were planted out in April are, on the whole, doing well.

There have been a couple of casualties but I am pleased that I decided not to over-winter these.

The raspberry bed is filling out really well, and has been covered with white flowers over the past two weeks.

Now the bees from the Apiary have done their work lots of the canes are dripping with ripening fruit.

Last year some of the canes seemed to be either Tayberries or some other variant, this year I will try to look after the canes a bit better and actually cut them back after I have harvested the fruit

Grape growing wild!

The grape vine that I was given at the end of last season is doing well.  At one point I was afraid that it was dead, but just look at it now!

There are even several bunches of mini-grapes forming.

On the Beechgrove Garden TV program this Sunday they recommend pruning back the vines to one leaf past the grapes and each sideshoot to one leaf past the main stem.

I will give that a try over the next week

The strawberry beds are doing well with mostly green fruit as yet, but the ones I spaced out and planted through weed fabric look to be the easiest to harvest and best for less weeds and control of runners - if it works well I might re-plant the whole strawberry bed after the summer.






The current and gooseberry bed is looking very lush and green, but the currant plant nearest the camera has absolutely no fruit what so ever!

The leaves are different to the other currants on the plot, so I will have to wait until I get some fruit before I can identify it properly.

Waiting for a space

On my table I have loads of broad beans and peas just waiting for a space to become ready in one of the beds.

There are also a few brassicas that were originally in the poly tunnel but were attacked by a slug.  Hopefully they can recover enough to be planted out.

Cucumbers, Squash, Basil and Chives

On the stand on the decking I have got a few strawberries that were rescued after a communal tidy day a few weeks back.

They have been joined by a few  Crystal Lemon Cucumbers, Hawk Squash, Purple Basil and a pot of Chives.

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In my original square foot garden bed there are two perpetual spinach and a chard that have gone wild, and are now far too big for the bed.

I will take them out and plant up some new seedlings as they take next to no time to grow and I will try to keep on top of picking the leaves so they don't get out of hand so easily again.

Walking Onion bulbils

My walking onion (Egyptian Tree Onion) is thriving - there are loads of bulbils forming on the top of their leaves, the bulbils, leaves and bulbs are all edible, but I am leaving it to grow as it is a perennial.

Most of the long stems have been broken by something - not sure what but I hope it wasn't me.

This year I have three beds of potatoes in the ground, the varieties I am growing are Maris Peer and Red Duke of York (1st earlies), Cara and Sarpo Mira (2nd earlies) and Pink Fir Apple and Orla (Maincrop).

White Currant

Last year I was given a couple of currant bushes, one red and one white, which I stuck into either end of a bed just to give them a temporary home.

Both bushes have taken, and I am very happy to have them absolutely dripping with fruit.

Red Currant

The redcurrant bush was so large that I had to clip it down quite a lot to get it in the back of the car.

Rather than throw these clippings away I stuck them in the ground around the bush.

Every single one survived and grew on, so I will have loads of redcurrants for my wine making later this year.

Compost pile

Last year I had been using two dalek compost bins, but the amount of green waste I was producing soon filled these and more.

I was fortunate to be given a few pallets by another plotholder which I screwed together to make a compost baywhich as you can see is also nearly full already.

Potato Update

It has been absolutely ages since I got a chance to update my blog, for which I apologise.

Things have not stood still either at home or at the plot, so I wanted to share the progress of the potatoes with you.



Anya Sprouting in a bucket



If you remember, I started off two varieties, Anya and Maris Piper, both in buckets and also straight into the ground.





The first to show were the Anya in the bucket, just a couple out of the five tubers in each of three buckets.





More Anya - in the ground this time



 



 

A matter of days behind were the Anya planted straight into the ground in bed 7 which started to show, but slightly more vigorously.





And in buckets



Maris Piper in the ground





The Maris Piper were about five days behind, but had soon caught up both on the ground and in the buckets.

When the rest of the seed potatoes had got chits large enough for them to be planted out I took them down to the plot and placed them inside my poly tunnel.

Pentland Javelin in front, Bambino behind



Casablanca on the left, Salad Blue to the right



I planted out one row of each into the raised bed where the Anya and Maris Piper are growing, and I also planted up two buckets of each to set out on the plot with the other buckets.

I also planted a potato bag each of Casablanca and Pentland Javelin inside the polytunnel to see if there is any difference in growth rates between those outside and inside.



First Potatoes in the ground

After waiting so long for the weather to start getting warmer I decided to start planting out the first seed potatoes of 2013.

I have got plenty of potatoes chitting, most of which I had bought at a Potato Day back in Feb.

http://vegpatchkid.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/potato-day.html

These have been set out in egg boxes for some time now, but there are really only two varieties which are ready to be planted out, the Anya and the Maris Piper.

The plan was to try to grow these in two different ways.  Last year I tried to grow potatoes at home in potato bags, but their yield was disappointing to say the least. 

I also put some supermarket potatoes in the ground at the plot - the very first thing I ever grew there - but as they didn't go into the ground until late July, whuch was far too late, they never really had much of a chance to grow and develop before they got struck down by blight.

This year I want to experiment a little, growing potatoes both in a raised bed and also in buckets and/or potato bags to see which method is a) easiest, and b) provides the best harvest.

I had been given a gardening voucher last year, so I decided to get out to the local garden centre and get it spent.

I picked up a load of 20 litre buckets which had large drainage holes in the bottom to use for planting potatoes.

Anya and Maris Piper ready for planting

Even though it is probably a little early, I decided to get the seed potatoes which are fully chitted into the ground as I am starting to get a little frustrated with the weather right now.

I filled the bottom of six buckets with about six inches of compost, and laid the seed potatoes on top.  I put three Maris Piper into half of the buckets, and five Anya into the rest.

These were covered by another six inches of compost, and the tubs were set out inside one of my raised beds which only has a covering of manure at the moment.

The plan is to earth up the growing plants as and when necessary until the buckets are pretty much full, then let the plants grow on until the harvest is ready when I will empty the buckets into the bed to harvest the potatoes.

This has two advantages - the harvest will be contained within the bed, and the compost will also fill the bed for me, killing two birds with one stone.

\The remaining seed potatoes were planted into another bed which had been newly double-dug over and well manured.

I put in two rows of Maris Piper and two of Anya.

It will be interesting to see how both methods compare.