April seedlings and potatoes

As of this morning we have nine sweetcorn seedlings, 23 dwarf kale seedlings, and more than 50 petits pois seedlings all springing out of their pots.

And we have five rows of maincrop potatoes (Desiree and Pink Fir Apple) which we planted using a bulb dibber, which is so much easier than trenching them. We’d already planted two rows of first earlies on 201, one row on 235 (and half a dozen tubers went into tyres on both sites, which should be harvestable about a fortnight earlier than those in the ground) and two rows on each plot of second earlies.

There’s a horrible fact about potatoes – when you’re planting them, it seems like you are planting acres, but when you have planted them, and you step back and look at the results, it’s never quite enough to get you through the year without buying spuds.

We also had to earth up our first earlies – they had suddenly put out masses of lovely strong foliage, so that was more back-breaking work with the rake, to cover the potatoes thoroughly so they don’t go green. Another horrible fact about potatoes is that while you can sometimes find easier ways to plant them, I don’t think there is ever an easy way to earth them up – just plain old hard work.

Labels: allotment-potato-tyres, allotment-potatoes, allotment-seedlings