​​Dealing with potatoes

Tuesday 18th April
Before I did anything else I stripped the soft growth from the brassica plants I had pulled up last time and add it to the compost bin. As they had gone limp my usual way of bashing them on the edge of the bin did not work so I was reduced to cutting the soft material off with my penknife.


​I then picked up a roll of wire grid and straightened it out on the track before staking it along the row of emerging peas. A scattering of birch twigs along each side of the gridwork will keep the pigeons, I hope, before I cover it all with netting.

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​Digging over the old brassica patch was needed so I could plant the last of my seed potatoes. My new neighbour is busy clearing his side of the fence so I needed to clear my side. The first trench was riddled with bindweed and took a long time to dig out into the wheelbarrow. This meant as I loaded the soil into the barrow I could go through the soil very carefully separating the bindweed roots from the general weeds. I needed to lay a plank along the fence to stop the soil dropping through the fence into my neighbour's plot. The second and third spits had less bindweed and soon I was digging clean soil even though there was still a bit of weed on the surface. The effort of picking out the roots meant I only managed a few more spits before I had to stop as I needed to earth up the early potatoes to protect them from any of the frost that has been forecast.

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​​I​ used the cultivator to loosen the soil between the rows before the raking the soil over the emerging shoots. I had to go over it twice to cover all the leaves.

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In clearing the ground I came across another blackberry plant which I offered to a nearby plotholder with a warning about its vigour.

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​Then I hoed between the onion sets before harvesting a few leeks and pulling  up a kale plant to take home.