All A Bit Late In The Veg Garden

Here's what the veg beds were supposed to look like back in early summer. Unfortunately, it is now too late for many of them to produce a harvest. The courgettes and beans are finally putting on some growth but we'll run out of daylight hours and sunshine before they can produce any sort of crop.

Some of the leafy veg will provide a late harvest.

The ground is finally workable enough to harvest some potatoes. I have left them in the ground for as long as possible to absorb as much moisture as they could find, but any longer and the voles and slugs will find them. The harvest is pretty meagre but it's better than nothing.

This year, I am covering cleared beds with straw. There was not much prospect of getting succession or cover crops in and I obtained a stack of old straw cheaply early in the year. The soil will stay protected from beatings of rain. In the spring, when I pull the straw back, the soil surface will be moist and crumbly. Any straw that has not been incorporated into the soil will be raked off and transported to the compost heap so it does not provide an irresistible home to slugs.

2021 Week 4 - My Perennial Project

We'll start with the weather.

It's been a week of fluctuating conditions, beginning with snow and early morning temperatures down to 5 below. But this was followed by a warm and very wet weather system. A couple of nights of heavy rain have seen water levels rise back to annoying levels. The seasonal lake and various ponds have reappeared and it is pretty squelchy underfoot. 

This was my week to be in school rather than teaching from home, so combined with the weather I have had limited opportunities to make significant headway on the smallholding.

Seed sowing steps up
My growing year has stepped up a notch with a gradual trickle of seed sowing. I've pushed everything a little earlier this year and purchased an extra heat mat to help persuade the seeds into germination and keep the tender young plants warm and snug. 

Some of my onions have germinated very well. As they germinate they come off the heat mat to give room for others. They just move to a different shelf on the staging which is currently in a warm spare bedroom. As soon as things warm up a little most of this will move into the conservatory which offers much improved light, but for the moment it's a bit cool in there and damping off of seedlings might be a problem.

All my aubergines have germinated. These need a long season to produce ripe fruit as I grow them outside. Of all my crops these are the most susceptible to red spider mite when grown in the polytunnel and I don't want to risk giving it a foothold back in.

I've started off my indoor tomatoes too, ten different varieties. I'll concentrate on these in a future post.

Strong lupin seedlings
but one seems to have
given up the ghost.

On a more decorative front, some of the seeds I collected from a gorgeous lupin plant have germinated strongly. Hopefully I can look after them and raise them into perennial splashes of colour around the smallholding.

Potatoes
As we move towards February, potatoes loom on the horizon. It won't be long till I pick up my order of seed potatoes for the year and set them to chit. Because of lockdown I saved some of each variety from last year just in case there was a problem with supplies this year. I put them in a spare fridge which seems to have held them quite well. This is just an emergency measure as it's best to start with fresh stock each year.

I have however planted the Arran Pilots which I saved through. These early potatoes have gone into a polytunnel bed with a heavy compost mulch and should give me new potatoes way ahead of the outdoor plants.

Perennial Hope

The week's main excitement has been a steady stream of deliveries of growing supplies. Thank goodness for the internet during lockdown. and this year is seeing a flood of experimental new crops - the product of too much time on my hands during lockdown. The idea of trying a few trendy perennial crops such as oca and Caucasian spinach has rapidly expanded into developing a major new area of the garden. 

I'm no artist, but this sketched plan opens a whole new can of worms

So here are some of the crops which will be in this area:

Fruit and nut trees already present - apples, pears, plum, almond, hazels, sweet chestnut, mulberry, fig. Also small-leaved limes which can be used for fresh leaves and tilia tea.

Soft fruits already present - gooseberries, red, white and blackcurrants, Japanese wineberries, loganberries, blackberry, raspberries, strawberries, chokeberry, Japanese quince. There's also a huge mahonia plant and an area of buddleia and flowering currants.

Other crops already present - rhubarb, asparagus sorrel, horseradish. There's also the elephant grass I planted last year for biomass which has developed strong rhizomes.

Up till now these have been grown in quite separate areas, but a redesign of where pathways go should help link it all together. I plan to introduce more layers to include climbing plants, herbaceous perennials and perennial tubers.

I'll be adding in some herbs too, such as rosemary, oregano and creeping thyme. Comfrey too.

So here's a list of the new and wonderful additions which will pretty much turn the area into a fully blown forest garden.

Good King Henry - Also known as Lincolnshire Spinach. I am currently trying to germinate the seeds.

Caucasian Spinach - Hablitzia tamnoides - If I can get this growing, it should be a vigorous climber whose leaves can be used as a spinach substitute. If this works I won't need to bother trying to grow annual spinach each year, which always bolts ridiculously quickly.

Oca - Tiny little tubers. I've not tasted them before and at almost a pound a tuber I'll eat some of the produce and sell some for growing. Some of the tubers I received were frost damaged (should be safe outside if well mulched) but I have enough left. They are currently sitting in dry compost in a tub in a wardrobe in the garage. They are actually a type of oxalis and will provide a very attractive summer ground cover.

Yacon - I tried this once before but lost it over winter. However, the taste was great and the harvest huge. If I had saved the growing points properly in a frost free place I could have multiplied it a hundred times. I've started this off in pots in a warm room and they have all thrown up fresh green foliage. They will need potting on before they go outside later in the year.

Mashua - A perennial nasturtium whose tuberous roots apparently taste radishy. I'll probably just use this as a decorative climber to come back year after year.

Chufa (Tiger Nuts) - Actually the bulbs of a grass. These are harvested and dried for eating or replanting. I've tried a couple of the dried 'nuts' and love them. They are sweet and nutty, turning coconutty.

Day Lilies - Edible flowers and young shoots. They'll probably be a very occasional harvest, but will add splashes of colour in the understorey of the forest garden.

Perennial Kale - Taunton Dean Kale, Daubenton's Kale and Portuguese Walking Stick Kale. One survived from last year but the ducks or turkeys have demolished a couple of others, which is an expensive lesson for me to provide some overwinter protection. I'll make cages out of willow. I have ordered a couple of replacement cuttings of Daubentons which will hopefully root successfully. The walking stick kale will be raised from seed which came all the way from The Azores. In our cooler climes they shouldn't set seed so easily so will stay perennial.

Wild Garlic - I've purchased seeds. If they germinate, these will be going under trees as lush ground cover.

Wild Strawberry - the seeds have just gone in the freezer to simulate a winter. if successful, these will be used for ground cover to provide tiny jewels of flavour explosion!

Skirret - A very old-fashioned crop. A bit fiddly to grow and harvest but it will be interesting to try.

Babington Leeks - I purchased six tiny bulblets last year and five have come back over winter. These have gone into the new perennial area and should grow much more substantially this year. They start growing midwinter and will have died back down by June, thus offering a leek flavour at a completely different time of year to traditional leeks.

Bamboo - I discovered a couple of lost bamboos at the back of my herb patch. They've been there since we moved in and have just started to thrive. I have taken cuttings from a golden bamboo which grows really tall. This was something I found on YouTube but I had no hope of the woody stem sections throwing out new growth. But lo and behold one of them has. The other bamboo is much thinner but considerably denser. It has gradually expanded into a large clump hidden by a large bay tree. So I have been dividing it, not an easy task. 
I will harvest the bamboos for sticks and canes and might give the fresh shoots a try too. But really I am growing them mostly for their statuesque appearance and for the rustling of their leaves and stems in a breeze.

Siberian Pea Tree - I've just sown seeds so this is a long-term project. Siberian Pea Tree is a nitrogen fixer and will be an important addition to the forest garden.

Sorrel - non-flowering. I already have a large patch of sorrel, but it is quick to go to seed every year and looks messy. So I have purchased a non-flowering form which should give fresh leaves over a much longer period. If it grows well I'll propagate it and dig out the old stock.

A sorrel root division and perennial kale cuttings

Mushrooms - I cant wait to get going on these. I'm planning on growing shiitake, oyster mushrooms and winecaps. An exciting new venture and just perfect for the forest garden.

I am also trying some more exotic perennials which will get their own area in the polytunnel. I'll still have to lift and store every winter probably. So I am trying ginger, galangal, eddoe, apios (groundnut) and Madeira vine. 

The delight of perennial plants is that, once they've got a hold, they can easily be multiplied (sometimes too easily!)

Next week: Pruning the orchard fruits

Lockdown Pottering. Day...no idea

A very late start today.

I wasn't nocmigging last night, but our routine has been unsettled, especially our sleep patterns. Sue has been more unsettled by the whole Covid-19 thing than I and it is not unusual for her to get up in the middle of the night.
Last night she let the dogs out and Arthur disappeared. This eventually resulted in myself being rudely woken up at 3 in the morning to help in the search. Of course Arthur wasn't at all concerned by his absence and was found in the vegetable garden up to goodness knows what.

First job of the day was to plant the final bed of potatoes. Pink Fir Apple potatoes are the latest of lates. In a blight year we often get little to no harvest, but they are worth it for the good years when they produce sacks full of delicious nobbly pink tubers which store well into the winter.

Next up were the poached egg plants. I had raised a tray of these as companion plants to my broad beans. I sow this combination every year and have only once had a very mild attack of blackfly on the beans. Whether it's down to the poached egg plants or not I don't know, but they look pretty anyway and are great for the bees.

Calabrese seedlings. Brassicas like to be planted firmly and it is 

good to plant them up to the first true leaves, so the first few centimetres of

stem that you can see get buried.

Final planting for the day was my first batch of calabrese seedlings. Calabrese is what people often call broccoli. I use the word calabrese not to be pretentious, but to avoid confusion with purple sprouting broccoli.







Unlike most of the brassicas, calabrese is a relatively quick crop so I grow several sowings to give a longer harvest period. This year I am growing spinach in with the calabrese. I am hoping that the calabrese grows quickly enough to afford the spinach plants a little shade to discourage them from bolting too quickly.













While I was in the garden I discovered that the female turkeys have taken a liking to comfrey leaves. This is not surprising really, as turkeys are also the only livestock on the farm which are happy to eat nettle leaves and keep them down. The comfrey is well capable of outgrowing a couple of turkeys pecking at it and will be very nutritious for them. The main comfrey bed has come up well this year and I will soon be taking my first harvest of leaves for plant feed.

And now for a gratuitous picture of Sue and the dogs.

Personal Protective Equipment

against a chill night time breeze

Tuesday was capped off with an hour of nocmigging between midnight and 1 a.m.
I wrapped up warm and settled down wrapped in a blanket as the night air was chilly. The moon hadn't risen yet so the stars were even more spectacular than they have been all week. It was a quiet night for birds though, with just the local mallards flying around and a couple of woodpigeons singing (yes, they sing during the night).
That was until 1 o'clock when a very clear shriek pierced the air followed by another. I had been swotting up on the calls of potential night fliers and instantly recognised this as the unlikely call of a Little Grebe passing right over my head.
This is the eighth new bird that I have registered for the smallholding in as many nights sat listening. It's astonishing how the birds that fly over during the night are such a different set to those that I regularly see during the day.

Easter Sunday sees the return of our Swallows

Let's start with the weather.
It rained constantly for the first two months of the year with storm upon storm sweeping through, but all this wet and windy silliness was put to bed by Coronavirus. Since its arrival we've had gorgeous weather, particularly since lockdown. We've gone from complaining about mud and flooded paddocks to complaining about bone dry ground.

Not too longer ago things were very different

As I write this on Sunday evening, the Easter weekend has seen temperatures into the mid 70s (old money). Saturday night we had some heavy showers, but it didn't make much difference to the soil. To do that we need sustained rain, even if it's just drizzle. Late afternoon today brought a change though. A chill wind howled across the fields and thunder rolled around the fenland skies.

I was up very late last night after nocmigging till the early hours. I added another new bird species for the farm list. That's seven new species heard in the last two weeks. This will have to stop when I go back to work though, as I'm now seemingly too old to burn the candle at both ends.

There was a big job planned for today, planting the maincrop potatoes.
I grow six varieties of maincrop: Orla, Cara, Desiree, Blue Danube, Valor and Pink Fir Apple.

Fossicking chickens

I no longer bother with digging trenches or burying seed potatoes deeply. Now I just clear the ground, nestle each potato into a small indentation made with the trowel and cover everything with a thick layer of compost. I then have to net or fleece the bed to stop the chickens and turkeys scratching all the compost back off the potatoes. The beds can be uncovered once the potato plants emerge and the compost settles down a bit. By then the ex free range chickens will be confined to their pen again as they can be a little too destructive in the veg plot. It is lovely having them fossicking around the place though.




I managed to get four beds cleared and planted up today. Normally the beds would have already been cleared, but my bad back over winter put paid to getting ahead with everything.
One of the beds still had last year's parsnips in. I harvested to the end of one row and was very pleased with the parsnips I got, though some were afflicted by carrotfly. That's why I always grow more than I need. These are one crop that does require soil disturbance to harvest.
I left half a row of parsnips standing and just planted the potatoes in the spaces.

I also finally discovered where the other turkey hen has been hiding as I happened across her nest complete with three eggs. She is in last year's summer salad bed, which is now full of flowering rocket and borage. Fortunately her nest was at one end of the bed so I was able to clear enough to leave her nest and still plant my Cara potatoes.

One of the beauties of no dig is that it is far easier to leave things in situ and plant around them, whether that be a turkey nest, a perennial herb or a self-seeded plant like poppies, borage or marigolds.


Not everything goes smoothly in the veg plot though. The broad beans I sowed direct a while back have germinated poorly. It may be that the voles found them, but less than half came through. These were from quite old collected seed though. It's not a total disaster as I always end up with too many broad beans. I have resown into the gaps, two beans per station this time. If they germinate it will spread the broad bean harvest over a longer period.

Of course our smallholding has plenty of livestock too. Now that the paddocks are drier and the grass is growing the sheep pretty much look after themselves. The poultry are pretty easy to look after too, thought they need twice daily feeding and locking away at night, as well as chasing out of the veg garden occasionally.
They can be a little messy though, especially the ducks. While I pottered in the veg plot, Sue was busy deep littering the chicken houses. Every couple of weeks we (well, mostly Sue) completely clean out the poultry houses, but in between we just add more straw. This bedding makes a valuable addition to the compost heap.

The bees take a fair amount of Sue's time too. One of the new hive stands had settled down and left the two hives it was supporting leaning forwards. First job of the day, while the bees were very active in the glorious sunshine, was to lift up the whole shaboodle while Sue wedged offcuts of wood under the front legs. This involved putting myself right in the line of fire at the front of the hives. This is where you need total confidence in your protective bee suit. We managed to level up the hives, but not before a bee got inside my bee hood. (The suit has a small tear which was theoretically closed off with a clothes peg. I have since insisted that Sue patch it up for me.)



This was a bit unnerving, but fortunately the bee was more intent on finding a way out than attacking my face.

I've saved the big news till last though, so if you've not managed to read this far you won't find out, but then you'll not be reading this so you won't know you've missed out.

So here goes. DRUMROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL...

The swallows are back! Yay!!! Three appeared above the veg plot early afternoon. Their calls and chattering stopped me in my tracks as I delighted in the sight, the clearest symbol of the passing of the seasons.

Potato Day

I often talk about the passing of the seasons and how we look forward to the same events coming round year after year.
Last Saturday it was the much anticipated Potato Day.
After planting the garlic, Potato Day and the start of seed sowing are annual markers of the beginning of a new growing season.

In my last post I talked about Fenland Smallholders Club. Another local group is Cambridgeshire Self-Sufficiency Group who organise this annual Potato Day. It is an opportunity for members of the club and members of the public to purchase from a range of about 50 seed potatoes. There are onions and shallots also and, for the first time this year, dahlia tubers too.
There are refurbished garden tools for sale, crafts and cakes and drinks.

CSSG Potato Day is held in a rather grandiose church in Huntingdon.

It was absolutely packed this year.

I've written about this every year for the past 5 years so I'll keep it brief.
The advantage of purchasing seed potatoes from a Potato Day is that there are knowledgeable folk on hand if you're not sure what you need, there are umpteen varieties available and you can buy as many or as few of each as you like so it's a great opportunity to try new types of potato.
It also happens to be an inexpensive way of buying potatoes.

This year I purchased over a hundred tubers of eleven varieties. That will be over a hundred potato plants for the grand total of £7.62!
Once you work out the best way to grow potatoes, there's actually very little effort involved. You certainly don't need to be digging trenches and shifting tons of heavy clay soil. So that's £7.62 for my year's supply of potatoes and eleven different varieties available for our enjoyment.

The varieties I am growing this year are the seven varieties I've settled on growing every year plus three which I grow in some years and one new variety.
The stalwarts are:
Earlies: Arran Pilot and Duke of York (Usually Red Duke of York but a crop failure means we couldn't get hold of them)
Second Earlies: Charlotte and Kestrel.
Maincrop: Valor, Desiree and Pink Fir Apple

In addition, I am growing Bonnies again as a second early and Cara and Orla maincrops. I have grown all these varieties before.

Finally there is Blue Danube, reputed to be one of the best for roast potatoes. This one is new for me.

Most of the potatoes will be set to chit, the process whereby they are encouraged to form strong sprouts before being planted. The aim here is to give them a start as they can't go outside yet. Potatoes are not frost hardy. No-one seems to be able to prove whether or not chitting works but most people do it! It certainly does no harm.



Half a dozen of the Arran Pilot potatoes will however be planted out in the morning, but under the protection of the polytunnel. These give a super early crop which is grown and harvested before the polytunnel space is needed for other crops.

Having selected and paid for my seed potatoes, I went over to the refurbished tool stand to chat to the guys there. I was admiring a cultivator with five spear shaped tines, a beautiful piece of equipment but of little use in my no dig garden with reasonably heavy soil.
But I was so glad I went for a chat as one of the people pointed out a potato fork they had for just a fiver. This looks like a normal digging fork, but the prongs are wide and flattened, designed to minimise spearing the harvest. I can't wat to try it out.

Potato day 2019

While heavy snow hit almost all the rest of the country, here in our little piece of fenland we managed to all but avoid it. But with the ground frozen for a couple of weeks it has slowed my progress in the veg plot.



That is though what the seasons are all about. As a smallholder you work with the weather patterns. We don't get snow all winter, but a week or two of freezing temperatures and the odd covering of the white stuff is what we should expect.
Anyway, I am glad we didn't get a lot of snow for it somehow has the capacity to make the ground even sludgier than a downfall of rain.

Saturday 2nd February was Potato Day, an annual event held by Cambridgeshire Self-Sufficiency Group.
For the last few years I have helped set up, getting lots and lots of potato varieties out of a van and laid out in neat order on tables. The event is held in Huntingdon but the venue has changed several times. For now it has settled into a fantastic old church in the very centre of town.
It surely has to be one of the most glamorous venues for a potato day.

As is usual I like to arrive early, get set up, purchase my year's supply of seed potatoes and get out before the place is full of Joe (and Jane) public.

There are over 40 varieties of potato to choose from. We used to have even more, but some of the more unusual types don't sell well enough to be worth buying in. They are just £1/kilo for members of the group, £1.30 for non members.
It is a great opportunity to experiment with new varieties. One year somebody bought one of each just so they could compare yields, taste and uses.

With so many types of potato on sale it can be a bit bewildering. It pays to do a bit of research and find out the qualities of each one. There is of course information available at Potato Day, but over the years I have now settled on eight varieties.
Primarily they absolutely have to be slug resistant. For some reason slugs like to munch some types of potato but not others. The other big pest is a fungal one. Blight. That's the same potato blight which caused famine in Ireland all those years ago.
We didn't get it at all last year but that was because it was such a dry year. It thrives in warm, humid conditions, exactly the conditions we are getting more and more in summer as the climate breaks down.
There are some varieties which have been bred to be very resistant to this scourge. I have grown them and their leaves did stay wonderfully green compared to the collapsed foliage of the potatoes all around them. Unfortunately though they have very little taste.
So instead I look for varieties with 'some resistance'. This usually means that they do get killed off by blight, but that for some reason it seems slower to infect the tubers meaning that more can be saved.

It is this prevalence of blight nowadays which necessitates purchasing new seed potatoes every year. If we didn't get it I would probably just use last years potatoes to start off the crop each year. This is the reason why 'volunteer' potatoes, those which you missed harvesting the previous year and appear in last year's bed, need to be removed straight away.

So, my eight varieties:
Earlies - Arran Pilot and Red Duke of York.
Second Earlies - Kestrel and Charlotte (Kestrel is the variety chosen by the Grow Your Own group for everybody to grow this year so we can compare results. Fortunately it is one which I grow every year as it grows very well here. I did used to grow Blue Kestrel successfully too but it is no longer available at potato day)
Maincrops - Desiree, Valor (a new one I tried last year, very firm flesh which stores well and has a lovely taste), Cara (a good all round white potato. I would prefer the organic growers' favourite Orla but that one is not available).
Speciality - Pink Fir Apple - very late to form tubers so be prepared to get none if blight comes early. But in a good year I get sacks full. It is a distinctive potato which is great boiled or whole in winter stews. It lasts well through the winter and we are often still eating it when the first of the early potatoes is ready in spring.

I have planted some of the Arran Pilot potatoes in the polytunnel where I can protect the emerging leaves from frosts. They will give an early harvest of new potatoes.

Arran Pilot and Kestrel potatoes being chitted

The rest are in the conservatory (aka plant nursery come potting shed at this time of year) chitting. This is the process where you lay them out in egg boxes and encourage them to start sprouting. In theory this gives them a head start once they are outside in the ground.
They can' just go straight into the ground outside as any frosts will likely kill them.
I think the effect of chitting is marginal but it's just something you do, almost a custom which marks the beginning of the potato growing year.

Pink Fir Apples - Late Developers come good

Nothing much was expected of this year's potato harvest. A dry, dry start to the year ensured the tubers never had time to grow well.
The rain arrived just in time to avert a total disaster but the yield was still appreciably down. Many tubers were not much more than pea size and the more prone varieties were pretty scabby.

Pink fir Apple potatoes are weird and wonderful shapes, branching like grotesque ogre's fingers

The only positive is that for the first time in years we have not had blight in the potatoes or tomatoes.

So far I have harvested the Arran Pilot, earlies which were surprisingly good considering conditions. However, my favourite Red Duke of Yorks pretty much disappeared without a trace.
I harvested the Charlottes and Kestrels a while back. These Second Earlies are normally the most reliable of all the spuds, but I only got half a sack of each this year.

And so into Autumn. I wanted to begin harvesting the maincrops a couple of weeks ago, but the earth has again been too dry to make digging much fun. After Saturday's prolonged rain I decided to have another go, but it was still hard going. The Desirees were somewhere between ok and disappointing and then I came to the Pink Fir Apples.

Yes, Pink Fir Apples are actually spuds! They are a very late variety. In a blight year the harvest can often be all but lost as the tops (haulms) have to be taken off before the tubers have had time to even begin swelling.
As I pulled out the nasturtiums and marigolds which had invaded the Pink Fir Apple bed, it became apparent that these late developers might actually have done quite well.
I scraped the dry soil away and they just came tumbling out of the ground. They are weird and wonderful shapes, branching like grotesque ogre's fingers, but that doesn't matter for they don't need peeling. We don't have a great problem with slugs any more since the duck slug patrol was introduced, but Pink Fir Apples really don't seem attractive to these slimy little blighters anyhow.

The success of my Pink Fir Apple potatoes is a victory for diverse growing, whereby several varieties of each vegetable are grown as an insurance policy. Something is bound to succeed!
If my recollection is correct, last time we had a bumper Pink Fir Apple crop was a similarly dry year.

Turkeys In A Twizzle

Saturday 12th May 2018
The Turkeys Hatch

A few weeks back our hen turkey started sitting on her eggs. So it was no surprise when she started to hiss and be much more protective when I ventured into the turkey enclosure yesterday. And it was no surprise when I saw discarded egg shells and three little heads poking out this morning.

The surprise will be how many there are and what colour. The male is mostly Lavender and the females are mostly Bronze, but since they are being bred for meat and not show we are not purists when it comes to fancy feathers. The important thing is that they are not double-breasted monsters and that they will be slow grown, as nature intended.

For now I shall leave well alone. They probably won't venture off the nest till tomorrow and there may well be more eggs hatching under the hen.

The Silver Stag behaved himself too. He gets close enough to feel a little threatening but trusts me enough to just stand close guard.

Earthing Up The Spuds
I left the turkeys alone and turned my attention to the potatoes. They are all starting to poke their leaves through the surface, so there is the small matter of earthing up to be attended to. I have learned a few short cuts when planting my spuds. No longer do I dig back-breaking trenches for them, but instead I just plant each tuber as deep as I can with a trowel. For the past few years I have then pulled the earth up over them with a draw hoe to create ridges. This is important to protect the leaves from late frosts and to prevent the new tubers from turning green through exposure to light. They often grow surprisingly near the surface.
This earthing up process often requires repeating as the potatoes grow more, or as the chickens do their best to make the earth flat again. They are banished from the veg garden for a few months now, but several of them still venture over gates and fences for a bit of a scratch around. They will learn the summer rules once they have been chased out a few times.
This year I am trying a different process, only earthing up as the new leaves appear. On the new potatoes I am using compost and old bedding straw to earth up, hoping that this will slowly release its goodness into the soil below. The chickens are finding this even more delightful to scratch around in, but it is lighter material and easy to pull back into position. Once it settles down they will leave alone.

Potato Day 2018

Saturday 10th February 2018
An early start as I headed for Huntingdon and Cambridgeshire Self-Sufficiency Group's annual Potato Day.
I've helped out for the last three years, each year at a different venue.
This year's venue was the most grandiose by far.

Generally I just help with the heavy duties, lugging sacks of potatoes and laying them out on the tables. I like to make myself scarce before the general public get let in.

For helping out I get first pick of the seed potatoes. I had already planned which varieties I wanted, completing my final research the night before. Priority has to go to slug resistance and blight resistance, for each of these curses is more than capable of taking out half my crop.
Fortunately there are enough suitable varieties left for us to have a good selection of spuds throughout the year.

The advantage of going to a potato day is that you can buy just a few tubers and try lots of different varieties. You get to pick your tubers too. The best are not the largest. I go for the size of a smallish egg.
The CSSG also have onion and shallot sets for sale as well as a very nice refreshments stand and a seed swap.

On my list this year were:
Earlies
- Arran Pilot (actually already got these, as I like to get some going in the polytunnel early)
- Red Duke of York - I've bought these every year since I first started growing them
Second Earlies - many of my absolute favourites belong in this category. In a bad blight year, they have at least grown for long enough to get a decent crop before it hits. The early growth means they beat the worst of the slug season too.
Charlotte - just perfect!
Kestrel - My third year with these, since Blue Kestrel stopped being available on the day. We are still eating these now and they haven't lost a bit of quality.
Maincrop
Desiree - always a reasonable performer, sometimes exceptional. A tasty mainstay.
Cara - an organic grower's favourite. Very good resistance and tasty.
Valor - grown for the first time last year. An offspring of Cara which did very well with wonderfully firm flesh and a great taste.
Pink Fir Apple - an oddity which does very well in my soil. A really good, earthy taste and keeps amazingly well. We've not even touched last year's crop yet.
Setanta - this year's new variety. One of the very blight-resistant types, but will the taste be good?


I don't get in the car these days without compiling an endless list of things to do while I'm in town. The rest of the day saw me stopping off at a health food shop (not many of those in The Fens) for nut supplies, Wickes for roof felt (sheds and chicken coops need constant repairs), The Water Zoo for pond liner (new pond for the ducks so I can have the wildlife pond back).
Then it was on to Lincoln Road where the ethnic food shops are. Corn Meal and Buttermilk haven't yet made it out of the city and into fenland! Spices, pulses and exotic vegetables are easier to find here too and cheaper. There's some wonderful Turkish bread available too and we always treat ourselves to a loaf when we're in Peterborough. Finally Morrison's for frozen ginger (the only place we know to get it).

After my grand tour, I hunted out the old egg boxes in the sheds. They come out every year and are ideal for chitting potatoes in. This is the process where the seed potatoes are set out, eyes up, in a light and moderately warm place so they gradually start throwing out new shoots. This gives them a head start provided you are careful not to knock off the tender shoots when they are eventually planted. They can't just go in the ground outside as a hard frost would destroy them or at least set them back a long way.

Now all we need is a good year. Not too wet, not too dry, not too humid. No slugs or splitting, no scab, no blight.