Saturday, April 14, 2012

Planting Kestral potatoes

Easter Sunday, 8th April 2012.
Joe's draw hoe
Chitted potatoes

Planting stage 1

Planting stage 2
Having watched Gardeners' World earlier, I'm told that Easter is the time to plant potatoes, so today's the day! I decided to plant the Kestral 2nd earlies today, so I've put 8 into my square bed. Monty Don said he used a mattock (although it didn't look like what I'd call a mattock) to make his trenches, but I don't have one - instead I used another inheritance, Joe's draw hoe, and this did a great job. To allow room for earthing up, I actually removed a bit of the top soil before I started, otherwise I think the bed may have overflowed!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

More sowing

Amy finally got to plant her sweetcorn yesterday, along with some dwarf and runner beans.


We sowed 12 seeds, with a view to doing the same again in a few weeks time to spread the cropping time, and used Joe's multi-dibber to make the holes for the sweetcorn to be sown into. 


The remaining seeds have been transferred to Amy's home school-made packet.

The beans have gone into recycled toilet roll tubes, so that we can plant them out later without disturbing their roots.  I filled them with multi-purpose compost and put them in a mushroom tray from the local greengrocers lined with a left over scrap from the weed-proof membrane. This is a bit of an experiment as I haven't tried it before - I hope they hold together long enough, as one of them is already unravelling a bit!