At the beginning of April I planted my ‘early’potatoes (a variety of spud which is ready to eat early in the season) and ‘main crop’potatoes (a different sort which is ready later in the season –and bigger? I’m not entirely sure yet) in a couple of trenches (about 20-30cm deep) next to each other at the far end of the vegetable garden.
I left plenty opf space (30 cm) between them and a bit more between the first trench and the stumpy barely alive new raspberry canes. Bealers thinks I’m mad to leave so much room but I think we’ll be surprised how big they grow and we can always plant something little beside them. My theory was that I remember that potatoes need earthing up so the newly formed potatoes don’t get exposed to the sunlight and turned green while they are growing bigger.
I got the children to help me trowel in a couple of inches of well rotted manure before we pushed the seed potatoes in firmly and were about to cover them up with soil. I noticed that on the end of one trench there was extra room by the fence for me to dig another foot or so of trench so I could get more potatoes in.
As an experiment I didn’t line the bottom of this last mini-section of trench with any manure but covered the whole happy lot (about thirty seed potatoes) up as I wanted to get the kids in for some urgent tea &bathtime (they melt or are totally loopy and uncooperative if I miss their bedtimeby half an hour or so). I watered them in with a couple of trips with the watering can.
Anyway. This evening I noticed that the spuds have sprouted this weekend (and my sweet peas have become very poorly looking but that’s not interesting right now). The earlies are some thick blueish green foliage and the main crop have lighter green leaves sprouting through the soil –BUT NOTHING GROWING IN THE BIT WHERE THERE WAS NO MANURE ADDED TO THE TRENCH!
No wonder man discovered manure being tremendous for the crops. I’m looking forward to finding out which ones taste better An hoping its the ones grown in poo as there are so many more of them…
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