I'm on a roll...

Another gorgeous day and we were out in the garden at 9.30am. The kids happily played in their mud hole while I dug over 2 garden beds in preparation for potatoes.

I went out to run a bunch of errands just before lunch and grabbed a couple of bags of seed potatoes from the garden shop. I'm still in a learning-phase of what to do with most things, but after a bit of googling it was clear to me that there are MANY ways or methods for: digging holes, spacing, when and how much to cover, how to chit, whether to cut the potatoes to get more sprouts per seed etc etc.

So, here is what I am doing...

~ In my newly dug over beds, I have dug trenches about 60cm apart (so I get 4 rows for my 2 metres).
~ Then when I plant the seed potatoes I'll place them down about 15cm and about 30cm apart. I will get about 28 plants per patch.
~ I intend on digging up a total of 4 patches for now and one patch will have some earlies planted.
~ When the plants grow I will mound up the soil but keep the top of the plants showing.
~ I intend to mix straw in with my soil as I cover
~ I have cut up my seed potatoes with an eye in each section.
~ The potatoes have mostly sprouted, but I have popped them on a seed tray to allow the cuts to dry for a few days and let the sprouts grow a little longer. They have been placed in my laundry - with natural light, but not direct sunlight
~ In the garden beds I will sprinkle on some potash (woodburner ash), mix in some compost with the soil and place the seed potatoes in.
~ I will protect them from any surprise frosts by covering over with straw

Today we also bought a semi-dwarf apple tree to replace our old one that fell down last year.

Simon dug up the weeds from a 5yr old compost heap exposing some lovely rich compost underneath. I will relocate this to make room for a new potato bed.

And looking at the ugly mud-hole that the kids have been working on over the past few months, I'm thinking that they've jumped and stomped the life (literally!) out of it (although having SO much fun in the process). It would take a lot of turning and recomposting to get it back into a healthy state - so Simon suggested we turn it into a small pond and get a couple of frogs. What a fab idea! We had floated the idea of a pond last year when we first set up the garden, but parked the idea to just focus on growing food. But I think now with the kids being a bit older and would understand to not jump on the netting that we'd place over the top that it could be a goer and would really add to the life and feel of the garden.