Up, Up and Away

Wednesday 24th January 2018
Turkey escape

High winds forecast again so I stayed at home to keep an eye on the place. Good job really, for Boris woke me up barking. He often barks at nothing in particular, but there was meaning in his bark this morning. I threw on some clothes and rushed downstairs just in time to see five turkeys heading past the kitchen window on a mission!

The girls were clucking excitedly.

I herded them back up the land and eventually back into their cage. The heras fencing was jumping around and had gradually jolted the bolt loose on the door. The door had swung open and the turkeys seized their opportunity.
I did my best to secure the fencing but the howling wind made it an uncomfortable task.

Twenty minutes later the turkeys were out again!!! Much as I wanted to retreat inside, I had to make some adjustments to the latch arrangement. I secured everything with baling twine just in case.

Then it was time for a retreat indoors. Arthur agreed.

Up, up and away - the first seeds of the year

I made the most of my incarceration by sowing the first seeds of the year, some rather early tomatoes. Sowing them this early will mean they need a lot of nurturing but if I can get them through they will hopefully be producing tomatoes ahead of the rest and I might get an acceptable harvest before blight strikes. 

On the other hand, the later sown plants might just catch up and overtake. Nothing ventured...

One tray contains seeds scooped straight from Sue's favourite Tesco Picollo tomatoes. Online forums indicate that they are likely to come true.

I've also put some potatoes to chit. These are destined for the polytunnel and should give me a crop at least a month before those which have to brave the big outdoors.

Saturday 27th January 2018
Rainy day filing
Rain all day. I'm not just a fair weather smallholder, but there's no point trudging through the mud doing more damage than good.
So I busied myself sorting the seeds. They are filed by date. For successional sowing, I simply move the envelope to the second sowing date once the first have been sowed.
It's a great system which means that nothing gets forgotten.

It also did my Big Garden Birdwatch, recording every bird that came to the feeders or onto the lawn during the period of an hour. A sharp frost would have made the list more exciting, but I ended up with a fairly representative list of the birds which are regular in the garden.

2018 Veg - All Systems Go Go GO!

Sunday 7th January 2018
Poultry losses
We lost one of the ducks on Saturday, the male Cayuga. He just wasn't there when I went to put them away. No feathers, no blood, no body. I count my blessings really that whatever took him just took one. It rarely happens and always at this time of year, when food is short for predators.

And today one of the commercial meat chicks. I didn't count them in last night, but only 7 emerged this morning. I searched everywhere before the gruesome find of the poor little thing encased in ice in the paddling pool. This is the first bird we have lost in there, as we have placed bricks around the edge and a wooden ramp to aid escape.
Losses are always sad, but sometimes they are unpredictable or unavoidable. It's part of the price of letting the birds have more freedom.
Monday8th January 2018
Turning the soil
Onto more positive things.
I took advantage of drier and frosty conditions this morning to finally get the bed ready for the garlic cloves. They'll be going in tomorrow when the soil is a bit softer. 100 cloves to produce 100 garlic bulbs. This will be the fifth year I've used my old bulbs with no negative effect on harvest. Not bad considering I ignored all the advice to buy specialist stock and instead brought them originally from a small Asian supermarket in Harrow.

Mr Rotavator comes out for the first time in 2018. I love to see the chickens and robins grabbing the opportunity to rid my soil of creepy crawlies. I'm sure they eat some good ones too, but so be it. As long as they get the slug eggs.

Sue picked up some Early potatoes for me too yesterday. They are to go in the polytunnel immediately, to start the new potato harvest early.  So after I had rotavated the garlic bed I set to clearing out the polytunnel. I'm tight for time for a spring clean, but if I can get the tubers into the soil I can get the spring clean done before the leaves poke through the surface.

I need to plant my polytunnel mangetout seeds too - which means auditing what seeds I have and completing my vegetable seed order for the year.

Wow! All of a sudden it feels as if the 2018 growing season is upon us. It gives me a spring in my step. Between now and February half term I'll try to take advantage of any fine days when the soil is not sodden to work all the veg beds, emptying the compost bins and incorporating it into the soil.

This year I plan to stick to the basics. No fancy crops that we don't really eat. Besides, I've tried just about every exotic vegetable there is to try.

I have some major smallholding projects planned for the year, so I am going to try to make my veg growing more simple and organised.

Plague and pestilence - a thoroughly disheartening affair

How dare we have a holiday!
We were only gone for just less than a week during which time a plague of pestilence and disease was wrought upon the smallholding. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration but this is a post to show that smallholding is not always a bed of roses.

On the positive side the animals were ok. But it was a different story in the veg plot.

Blight
For the umpteenth year in a row blight has swept through my potatoes and moved onto my tomatoes. And because I wasn't here to spot it early it had a chance to kill off all the foliage on the Earlies and Second Earlies before starting on the Maincrops. There were no signs of it when we left for Scotland and by the time we returned it had ravaged the crop. The timing could not have been worse. I took the tops off all the potatoes and have left them in the ground so they don't come into  contact with any spores on the soil surface, but harvesting has been a thoroughly depressing activity, with perhaps just a quarter of the Early potatoes surviving. I haven't yet dared check the other potatoes, but am clinging onto the hope that Charlottes have been pretty blight resistant in previous years.
The blight has then moved onto the tomatoes. It enters the plants through the leaves so I have removed most of the leaves and check daily, removing all affected leaves and fruit. But once it gets into the stem you are fighting a losing battle. For some reason the plum varieties, Roma and San Marzano, seem to fare the worst. A fairly decent crop can still be salvaged from the others.

Spanish Slugs
Next on the list is slugs. More precisely the big fat orange ones which some people call Spanish slugs. The problem is they are too big and slimy for natural enemies to predate. I think the key to controlling them is to leave them no cover, but this means keeping the veg beds perfectly edged. The most effective killer of these orange slime-monsters is my edging shears - messy but effective!
Unfortunately they also seem to like living under a dense canopy of nasturtium leaves and whenever I have let these companion plants ramble it has resulted in an army of slugs attacking the crops.
So habitat destruction is proving the key to control here, as well as direct hunting out of the enemy followed by quick dispatch.

I have also released the ducks into the spare veg patch where my brassica leaves are more hole than leaf. This is in the part of the smallholding which used to be arable with the result that there is very little topsoil. The clay surface opens into wide cracks during the summer, a perfect daytime hideout for the slugs.
During my research of Spanish slugs I have come across an awful lot of poor advice on various forums, but one comment I read has reminded me of a technique which could possibly work. Apparently slugs are suckers for porridge oats, which then swell up inside them with disastrous consequences (for the slug).
I can buy sacks of porridge oats for just a few pounds and have some in stock, for the sheep love them soaked and mixed in with a few sugar beet pellets.  I would imagine the ground needs to be dry for this to work well and the oats to achieve maximum swell inside the slug, so now would be a perfect time to try.

Red Spider Mite
Third on the most unwanted list is Red Spider Mite. I nuked the polytunnel this winter but they have crept back in, though much later than in previous years. I am managing to keep them under control with weekly sprays of pyrethrum on to the most affected plants and sprays of rosemary oil mixed with eucalyptus oil and a little soap every other day in between. The trouble is you can never quite totally eradicate them.
While we were away they multiplied rapidly in the polytunnel, moving from the aubergines (always the first to be hit) onto the cucumbers (always the second). However, I have been working hard and they are back under control for the moment.



Well, that was a depressing post wasn't it. But we came back from our holiday refreshed and full of optimism. The disappointments have been shrugged off and we have been forging ahead with new projects. Hence the lack of posts recently. We really have been working very, very hard till late every evening.
More on these exciting new projects very soon.

A Hutton Alert!

Wednesday's forecast - cats and dogs

Last week we finally got some rain. Well, not just some rain but a WHOLE BUCKETLOAD. Quite possibly more in one day than we'd had in the previous two or three months.

As a result, the grass has started growing like mad (good for sheep, bad for maintenance - especially with the ride-on needing to go in for service but not likely to be even looked at for a few weeks), the weeds have gone berserk and there are slugs everywhere.
But I'm not moaning. The soil is beautiful to work, weeds practically jump out at the slightest tug and all the vegetables and flower beds are making rapid progress.

Add to that being past the last frost date (just watch what happens now!) and we really have entered a new season.







And with this came my first ever Hutton Alert on my phone. I didn't even know what a Hutton Alert was, but it came from the Potato Council so I guessed it was something like a Smith Alert, though these never come before mid-June.
There has been a problem with Smith alerts for the past two years. A Smith Period is supposed to be a period when conditions are ideal for blight to strike potatoes and tomatoes. It is, in theory, possible to take precautionary action by spraying. However, for the past two years blight has struck my potatoes way in advance of any Smith Period being notified.

So it was no surprise to learn that the rules have changed. A Smith Period is two days where the temperature stays above 10C and humidity is at least 90% for 11 hours or more on each day. The Hutton Criteria radically reduce the humidity element to 90% for 6 hours each day.

The problem is that my Maincrop potatoes have only just poked their heads through the ridges I carefully mounded up for them and already they are facing the risk of blight. I think that maybe I'd just rather not know. I don't spray anyway, as drenching the upper and underside of every leaf is totally impossible. Instead, when the weather is warm and muggy (in effect a Smith Period) I watch my potato leaves very carefully and take the tops off if blight strikes.
I guess this year I will keep an eye out when the weather is warm and slightly muggy (A Hutton Period).

Never good - the first signs of blight on potato leaves

I grow enough potatoes that even if blight strikes early, as it did last year, I still get enough spuds to last us through the year. Key to this are Second Earlies (Charlottes, Kestrels) which should still produce a decent crop before blight strikes and which store well enough through the winter.
If we get a good year then the geese and sheep do very well for potatoes too.

In addition, I grow a few First Earlies in the polytunnel, direct in the soil. In fact, just last week I harvested the first of these. I could have harvested a little earlier but I wanted a good crop so they go through till the first of the outdoor grown spuds are ready.

A New Comfrey Bed

18th March 2017
Re-reading the works of Lawrence D Hills (founder of the UK organic movement) has inspired me to make better use of my comfrey plants.

My established comfrey plants are coming up fast.

Half a comfrey plant will make many more.

They are of the variety Russian Bocking 14, which importantly does not self-seed all over the place. Instead you multiply it by dividing the rootstock. This is the time of year to perform this operation, just as the leaves of established plants are poking their heads up into the spring air.

It is achieved by simply plunging a spade into an existing plant. The considerable rootstock is surprisingly juicy and crisp. I like to leave at least half of the old plant in its place, but the other half can be subdivided into a dozen new plants easily. In theory, each small part of root will become a new plant, but I like to use a part of root which is throwing up new leaves. I think this may be the difference between a root cutting and an offset, though I may be wrong! Anyway, you can't really go wrong with comfrey.

I guess the only thing would be to establish a bed where you don't want it to be in a few years time, for the depth of the roots and the ease with which they grow into new plants when chopped up means that getting it out of the ground is almost impossible (repeated doses of weedkiller would have to be the solution I guess)

Today I used three of my established plants to create a new bed of 50 plants! The parent plants will be back to their best very quickly and by next year the young plants will have caught up with them.

Why do I need this much comfrey? Mainly as a natural fertiliser and as a compost component. Comfrey has extraordinarily deep roots which bring nutrients from way down. The leaves can be cut half a dozen times a year and if you let it flower it is much appreciated by the bees. I have planted a few in odd corners which I allow to flower, but the main beds I try to keep on top of cutting.

Comfrey leaves can be put straight into the ground under transplanted seedlings or laid on top as a mulch. They can be added to the compost heap or steeped in water to make a tomato feed soup. If I can grow enough, I intend to feed it to the chickens too as a once a week treat.

It took me most of the morning to create my new bed (much of which was taken up extracting dock roots and creeping thistle from the new site) which is down in the spare veg patch, next to the compost bins there.

While we are on the subject of compost, I now have a new source of horse manure. Next door have a fancy poo hoover and today I took delivery of my first poo, all nicely chopped up. It will be a fantastic addition to the compost bins, adding goodness and considerably speeding up the rate at which they turn garden rubbish into black gold.

Much of last year's mature compost went onto the veg beds at the beginning of winter. More specifically it went onto the beds where this year I will grow potatoes. It has been rotting down and being incorporated into the soil by the worms.
Today I took Mr Rotavator onto those beds and managed to turn them. Mr Rotavator has been a bit poorly of late. His engine has been running far too fast and threatening to explode! I have poked around a little bit and today he seemed to run fine which was a relief as now is not a good time for him to throw a sickie!

New potatoes and rows of turnip seedlings

doing well in the polytunnel

Double protection for the carrot seedlings

I was hoping to get my early spuds into the ground, but the heavens opened and drove me into the polytunnel. In there the extra early potatoes have already reached the surface. We should have scrummy new potatoes just as last year's stored tubers have run their course.
I sowed a new row of turnips too and resowed the carrots. For the second year in a row they seemed to disappear as soon as they germinated. I have taken the precaution of cloching the new ones in case it is too cold for the seedlings at night time. I have scattered some organic slug pellets in there too to cover that option.

The rain never stopped for the rest of the day. I did all the work I could think of to do in the tunnel and then retreated indoors.

The evening was spent at a Race Night (lots of gambling, drinking and eating, all in moderation of course) to raise money for Sue's school. They raised over £1000 which is not bad for a small village school. The money will be used to pay for the children to go to the pantomime later in the year. I reckon it should be Jack and The Beanstalk or Mother Goose.

Potato Day

Sorry. Not many photos. My car temporarily broke the phone. Read on for more details.

11th February 2017
Cambridgeshire Self-Sufficiency Group's 8th (I think) Potato Day.
This is an event where the club buys in over 50 varieties of seed potato to sell to members and the general public. Potato days are a great way to try new varieties as you can buy as few or as many as you like. Not only that, but it is the cheapest way of buying seed potatoes if you don't want to buy them in 25kg sacks!

As with last year I was there to help out with the setting up, which basically involves unloading about 100 sacks of potatoes and arranging them on tables in alphabetical order. I arrived at the hall at 8am sharp, which involved a 7 o'clock departure from the farm in driving snow, fortunately not of the settling kind.

As well as being helpful, helping out also entitles me to choose my potatoes in peace, before the general public come flooding through the doors. There were about 700 visitors this year.
I don't like that many people, so I quickly chose my potatoes and made a hasty departure.

The varieties I have chosen for this year are:

Aaron Pilot
- a good, reliable First Early. I find it to store well in the ground too.
Red Duke of York
- a floury early potato which is excellent for chips or roast too. Has a firm place on the list.
Duke of York
- I decided to try the non-red variety too this year, mainly on the recommendation of Lawrence D Hills in his pioneering book on organic growing (published over 45 years ago). He recommends these as an early which can be left in the ground to grow larger. One advantage of this which I hadn't considered is that, in an early blight year, you at least get a reasonable crop. I doubt Mr Hills would have realised just how warm and wet our summers would become and how regular blight would become.
Orla
- another early which can be left in to become a Maincrop. A disease resistant organic favourite. I have grown this once before.

Charlotte
- a great performer in this area. 100kg were sold out in 25 minutes at the potato day. My most reliable cropper, matures early and tubers seem resistant to blight. Extremely little slug damage too. What puzzles me is that these qualities are not pushed on websites. Maybe it's a secret not to be shared!
Kestrel
- different taste qualities, but otherwise rivals Charlotte for blight and slug resistance. Another Second Early so it guarantees a crop even if the tops have to come off early. Firmer flesh than Charlotte and stores even longer. Great for chips. First grown by me two years ago. Last year I grew Blue Kestrel, but they were not available this year.

Desiree
- a great old-fashioned performer and one of my favourites for baking and boiling. You can't go far wrong with this one.
Cara
- a Maincrop variety popular with organic growers as it has high blight resistance. Some negative reviews about going soggy when boiled. I bought a few to try
Valor
- the only variety I've never grown before. An offspring of Cara.

Pink Fir Apple
- last year I got none. In 2015 I got sacks full. Let's hope it does well this year. I've missed the taste.

Altogether I bought just over 10kg of seed potatoes. A tenner's worth of potatoes should last the two of us comfortably for the whole year.

Four Hours and a Tow Truck later...
Two miles out of Huntingdon the car broke down. Completely kaput. Sleet outside and no heating, stuck in a muddy layby by the side of a busy road in the middle of nowhere. Thank goodness for Google Maps and phone reception.
Fortunately the breakdown service didn't take too long and I had plenty of spare coats flung in the back of the car as usual. But the car stubbornly refused to spring to life so it was another hour long wait for a tow truck.
The alternator had gone and the battery was so dead we couldn't even get the car into neutral without jump leads.

The journey to my local garage was quite enjoyable given the circumstances. The driver was a chirpy old fellow and there were great views over the dykes and Washes. And being in the passenger seat I noticed so much more than when I am driving. Not only that, but I saved a little petrol money too!

I did take photos of Potato Day and of my car being winched onto the back of a lorry, but it seems the alternator going affected more than just the car, as I had to reboot my phone to get it working and I had lost the day's photos. I think the car tried to suck power through the phone charger since its own battery offered nothing.

With the weather matching my mood, cold and grey, I spent what was left of the day setting my potatoes to chit.

12th February 2017
Squeaky Clean Polytunnel
Keen to catch up on some of yesterday's lost time, I was up early and creosoting some of the wood in the polytunnel. An extreme measure but I am determined to get rid of the red spider mite this year. I have decided that the environment inside a polytunnel is so false that there is no point trying to maintain a natural balance. Of course, I will still use organic means wherever possible and I will still encourage hoverflies, ladybirds, bees, toads.

With this job done, I planted up some of the Arran Pilot potatoes for a really early crop.

So that's where chicken comes from
Next up were the last of the meat chickens along with the young cockerel who is excess to requirements. This didn't take long but I'm sure you don't want all the details. They are readily available in other posts I have written!

Open space for the lambs
The recent wet weather has meant that the three Shetland lambs quickly turned their enclosure into a muddy quagmire, so today I moved them to the first paddock. This meant that they were within sight of the adults and much baaing ensued. Not being used to so much open space or electric fencing, it wasn't long before one of the lambs was through the fence, across the separating paddock and through the second fence to join the adults. It didn't matter too much. It always takes the sheep a few hours to learn about the fence, after which they tend not to go through it.

Later in the afternoon I caught the lamb and carried it back to join the others. There were no more problems.

With the meat chickens gone and the young cockerel dispatched, a stable had become free which gave us the opportunity to move Priscilla and her chick in with rest. They got a fair bit of hassle to start (to be expected) but we kept a close eye. Moving things around a bit in the stable gave the other chickens something else to think about and gave the new chickens somewhere to take refuge if they needed.

With darkness now upon us, I retired to the farmhouse but continued working. For the seed-sowing season is upon us. Today it was cauliflower, kohl rabi and lettuces. These are sown in trays inside but will go straight to the polytunnel once they germinate. They do not need heat, as long as temperatures do not plunge ridiculously low.

13th February 2017

At this point I didn't realise the Ixworth cockerel had taken out my glasses.

He came peacefully in the end.

Ixworth trio in a flap
Only the Ixworth trio remained down in the chicken pen, in a coop only just large enough for them to stretch their wings. Catching them was quite an effort, during which I got a few wings in the face and lost my glasses in the mud, but we managed to get them down to the now spare stable. They are inside but have space and straw aplenty.



I finally got round to planting the dozen or so small Christmas trees I purchased for £1 each. These are available every year and will add a nice bit of variety and greenery to the smallholding given patience.

Evenings are for seed sowing now. Today it was two trays of leeks which will be enough to keep us going through next winter.

Potatoes - The Results Are In.

6th August 2016

The view over the farm buildings and veg plot from up the ladder

I woke up inexplicably early today so decided to take advantage of the forecast sunny day to creosote the cladding on the house.

The fine was ideal for harvesting the potatoes too, as they need to bake in the sun for a while to improve their storage time. In truth it is a little early in the year to be harvesting the spuds, but blight has dictated proceedings this year.

And so we step back three weeks to when the tell-tale signs of blight swept through the potato crop. Within a couple of days a few brown blotches on the leaves can turn into rows of withered plants. If it gets into the stems it rapidly spreads down to the tubers.
The only course of action is to chop off all growth above ground and hope that it has not spread underground. Of course, this puts a halt to any further growth of the tubers, so the earlier blight comes the smaller the potato harvest.

This year the blight came early.

As if this is not depressing enough, there are plenty of other things that can go wrong with a potato, especially in a cool, wet year. The only benefit of so much rain earlier in the year was that the tubers would hopefully have been swelling quickly.

Once the tops have been removed, you need to leave the potatoes in the ground for two to three weeks so that they do not come into contact with live blight spores on the soil surface when you harvest them. Otherwise they will rot in storage. The fishy smell of a blighted potato tuber is unforgettable.
The longer they are left in the ground though, the more susceptible they are to slug damage, so it is a balancing act which also depends on waiting for a fine, sunny day.

A fine crop of Markies

So today was D-Day, the moment of truth. It took me several hours of hard digging to unearth all the spuds. Some varieties were a joy to dig as the fork lifted to reveal clusters of large, healthy tubers. Others were disheartening with very few usable potatoes. That's one of the reasons why I grow nine varieties, as they all have different qualities and different resistance to disease and pests.



So, here's what can go wrong!

Look carefully and you see the slimy,

melting cheese gunk that is a blighted potato.

Any blighted material needs to be dealt with.

Ideally it is burned, but this is not so easily done!

I put it all into a couple of closed unit plastic compost bins,

never to see the light of day again!

Splitting. Only the Picassos did this.

Still edible, but it did give a route in

for pests and diseases.

(See the slug?)

Slugs

Some varieties seem much more susceptible.

Can cause serious damage in a wet year.

These neat holes often open up into a network of tunnels on the inside.

They don't go to waste though as the geese and the sheep hoover them up gratefully..

A few always get caught by the fork.

Though not many, it always seems to be the best specimens!

And now for the performance by variety. Remember that yields reflect a bad blight year when the tops were taken off in mid July, which would be expected to hit the maincrop varieties worst.
Also, every year is different and performance varies greatly between varieties and in different soils.

Markies potatoes laid out

on the grass to dry.

Markies - Main Crop
A trial crop based on other people's strong recommendations. This variety is supposed to make for tasty chips - always good! Despite the early topping off there was a good yield of medium to large potatoes. Blight had only got into a couple of the tubers. There was some slug damage, but overall very little.
Picasso - Main Crop
I only grew these because I had a few kg left over from the bulk order I do for smallholders. Personally I wouldn't grow a variety that is favoured by farmers. It usually means that it thrives under a regime of chemicals, not necessarily the best for an organic grower. Unfortunately most of the smallholders are very conservative in their potato choices.
The Picassos had split much more than any other variety, caused by rapid growth in wet weather. This had allowed access to pests. Few tubers were blighted, but maybe 20% had slug damage. The yield was fair but nothing exceptional.

Blue Kestrels set out to dry on the soil surface.

In the foreground,

my entire usable harvest of Bonnies!

Bonnies - Second Early
Probably my favourite potato as a baker. Produces a good yield of large, round, attractive tubers. Unfortunately, not for the first time, the usable yield was disastrous. Blight had got into maybe 30% of the tubers and about 90% of what was left had become slug food. The slugs seem to love this variety. The end result was no more than a dozen very nice tubers from as many plants. Bonnie has had its last chance!
Blue Kestrel - Second Early
Having experimented with Kestrel last year and been impressed with the taste and the firm texture of the potatoes which lasted well in storage, I decided to try Blue Kestrel this year. I only grew ten plants, but this year at least it has turned out as one of the two absolute stars. The tubers are very attractive and many were large enough to make excellent baking potatoes. Being a Second Early is always going to help n a blight year. Blight had only got into three individual tubers and, unlike the Bonnies which they grew next to, there were virtually no slug holes. If the taste and storage are anything like last year's Kestrels then this will be on the list every year. Mind you, I said that about Bonnies once, when we had a dry year.

Charlotte - Second Early
I cannot believe how much this variety costs in the shops. It is one of the cheapest seed potatoes to buy from the wholesaler and has performed brilliantly every year. Yield was excellent and the quality of the tubers outstanding. There was virtually no blight in the tubers and virtually no slug damage. This makes Charlotte a brilliant insurance policy for a poor year, though it would more than earn its place in the veg plot in any year.
Dunluce - First Early
I tend to alternate between this variety and Arran Pilot for my bulk standard early potato. Being a First Early it has done all its growing before blight ever hits. However, earlies don't store so there are always quite a few left in the ground when the other potatoes are ready. This is where I like Dunluce and Arran Pilot, for they simply grow larger but retain their great flavour. This year's Dunluce have stayed relatively blight and slug free in the ground too. As would be expected with plenty of rain, the yield and tuber size has been good.
Red Duke of York - Early
A favourite of mine. An early red potato which is excellent for chipping and roasting. Doesn't produce massive tubers, but they are brightly coloured and good quality. This year there were more tiny tubers than usual but the yield was still fair. It has not stood in the ground as well as the Dunluces and blight has got into some of the tubers. So not the best year for this variety but it still performs well enough to firmly hold its place.
Pink Fir Apple - Late
This was the absolute star of the show last year, producing sacks of large tubers. The tubers seem to be pretty blight resistant and incur little slug damage. However, this can be an all or nothing potato, and this year it was nothing! I couldn't risk not cutting the tops off, but being a late developer it was inevitable that the tubers would not have had time to develop. As it was I got about a plate full of mini Pink Firs!
This potato still remains a firm favourite of mine and I am happy to run the risk every year as it is more than worth it when it pays off and this is the first time that I've had no crop to speak of.
Desiree - Main Crop
Despite it being a fairly bulk standard variety, I love Desiree potatoes. They are versatile and produce a good yield of attractive tubers, with a fair percentage of whoppers for baking.
In the shops it has been largely replaced by its descendant, Romano, but I find that Desiree preforms better for me.
The blight reached the leaves of the Desirees last so it didn't really have time to get into the tubers. The tubers had not quite had time to swell to full size, but I still got a fair crop and there was relatively little slug damage. Not the best year, but I've still got enough to keep me going.

So, overall it was a pretty challenging year potato-wise but I still ended up with about five sacks of potatoes which will be plenty to get us through till the first First Earlies come out of the polytunnel next spring.
A couple of varieties bombed and a couple were outstanding. Slugs seem to increase year on year in my veg plot, though nothing like as bad as the plague year we had in 2012. In a wet year though, they probably cause more crop loss than does blight.
When I choose next year's varieties, slug-resistance will remain a high priority.

Definitely on the list will be Charlotte, Blue Kestrel, Desiree, Dunluce/Arran Pilot, Pink For, Red Duke of York and a new entrant, Markies.
Definitely off the list are Bonnie.
As for Picasso, I basically got them free but if I had to pay I'd look for another variety.

Boris and Arthur could have helped with the digging,

but decided instead to go digging for moles in amongst the climbing beans.

Scorched by Blight

15th June
New Chicks On The Block
Bang on time the first three chicks hatched out in the incubator. Tomorrow morning they'll be needing the electric hen to keep them warm. This means that the previous batch of chicks, now nearly four weeks old, need to move out.
With this in mind, much of today was spent cleaning out and reorganising the stables. The turkeys have a new perch which they have instantly taken to.
For the Ixworth chicks I've set up a broody ring - basically a long piece of very expensive Correx formed into a circle and held together with some very expensive cheap bulldog clips. I've constructed a lid out of spare bits of wood and mesh, this to deter vermin. Heat will be supplied from a heat lamp suspended from the joists, though at the moment I rather suspect the chicks would be absolutely fine without this. They've been going outside during the day for a while now.

16th June

New Accommodation for All
At the last count we were up to 13 chicks. Most of them have dried and fluffed up now. They can survive about the first 24 hours on goodness supplied from their egg, but after that they need to come out of the incubator and into controlled housing with heat, food and water.
There was a big change this evening for the previous generation of chicks too, who found themselves in a rather cosy stable under a heat lamp.

They have much more space there, but more importantly they won't be stinking out the entrance hall to the house any more. So far everything seems to be going very well.



In fact it was all change for everyone today. The sheep have moved paddocks to fresh grass and are revelling in finding new patches of clover and young sowthistle leaves. They will stay in this section for a week or more before moving on. This method of strip grazing keeps the grass fresher and helps with worm control.



Blighted
Final job of the day was a somewhat depressing one. Despite there being no Smith period or near miss in the last two weeks, blight has swept through the potatoes in the last couple of days. There is no choice but to cut off the tops to try to prevent it getting into the tubers. Of course, some of the later variety may not have had enough time to develop any decent size tubers, so last year's bumper crop of Pink Fir Apples will definitely not be repeated. The First and Second Earlies seem to have swelled nicely though. I guess the rain is a double-edged sword.

17th July

Chilly chicks, cold eggs and thawing freezers
Woken up at 6 o'clock to be told by Sue that half the house had no electricity. If she had said that all the electricity had failed I would not have been concerned for power cuts are pretty much the norm here. But this was different. We still had lights downstairs but not upstairs. Anything plugged in wasn't working either - the freezers, the incubator, the electric broody.

On investigation the switched had tripped, but it just wouldn't flick back on. Fortunately the electrics in the garage were still working so I moved the incubator and the electric broody out there. The electric in the stables was working too, but the heat lamp had gone off. It seemed a huge coincidence, but I couldn't really understand how this could affect the house electrics as it had 2 RCD protectors before the trail got anywhere near the house.

It was early Sunday morning. There was no-one we could call at this time and the house had virtually no electricity. We decided to go back to sleep and ring around later on. With no home phone, no internet and poor mobile reception, I was not looking forward to this.

I woke up again at 9.30am! Had it all been a dream?

I headed downstairs and the circuit breaker switch was still in the down position. I tried once more to flick it back up... and it stayed! The kettle came on, the phone beeped back into life, the printer aligned itself and some of the lights came on.

Out in the stable, I unplugged the heat lamp and tried it in another socket, without the extension lead. It worked. I don't really understand what went on overnight, but I've just got my fingers crossed everything stays working. I'm not risking anything though. The chicks are on the move again into the garage where the heat lamp can reach them without needing the extension lead.

The youngest batch of chicks are staying out in the garage too. It's a good set up that we have accidentally hit upon.

After a hectic morning I headed off to a friend's smallholding where the Grow-Your Own group which I coordinate was gathering today. On the menu today were Discussion Subject: My favourite tool/most useless tool. Plant Doctors: Mosaic Virus. Trial Crop: Spanish Black Round Radish. Growing and Cooking with: Berries and Currants.
Sue had kindly made a frozen blackcurrant yogurt and a whitecurrant sorbet for me to take along. The sorbet especially went down a storm on such a hot sunny day.

Here's what blight looks like
One thing I did find out today was that I am just about the last person to have been hit by blight, so I guess I should count my blessings. I was hoping not to have to chop the haulms off the last bed of potatoes, the Desiree and Pink Fir Apple, as there would be little chance these would have developed any decent size tubers yet. But when I inspected closely, blight was taking hold of these too so reluctantly they got the chop.

Potato blight taking hold

Sometimes it is not totally clear whether plants have blight or if it is just that the plants are dying down naturally. However, this year the symptoms are classic and unmistakeable, so I took a few snaps today for you to compare if you ever need.

Once all the growth above ground has been removed, it needs to be moved away since it holds spores which can easily contaminate the soil and are very likely to spread to the tomatoes. Ideally it is burned, but that's easier said than done when it is still green. I put mine into a closed system compost bin and it never sees the light of day again!
As for the potatoes under the soil, they are best left for a couple of weeks, for if they are dug up immediately they will get contaminated by the spores on the soil surface and will rot in storage.

The turkey hen investigates the Ixworth chicks

18th July
Thirsty work
The thermometer hit 30 degrees today. I love the hot weather. Unfortunately I had to be in work to make up for the time lost when my car was broken down last week.
I spent the evening piping water to all the animals and poultry and watering the young plants in pots outside the polytunnel. Everything is thirsty on days like this.
I then mixed up a spray of sodium bicarbonate, just a couple of tablespoons mixed with a gallon of water, a tablespoon of oil and a few drops of soap. This spray was for the tomatoes in the polytunnel as well as anything else which might be affected by fungi, such as the courgette leaves and aubergines. The main reason for this spray is to prevent the tomatoes getting blight and the other plants getting powdery mildew.

19th July
El Scorchio
I woke up late for work after Arthini had twice escaped from his overnight basket, the second time by busting through the wall! A hot night obviously had the dogs sleepless as they woke us up at regular intervals.
The day was definitely el scorchio.
In the evening we finally got to the Thai restaurant in Holbeach. We love Thai food and have been living here almost six years now, but it has inexplicably taken someone's leaving do to get us there. The food was gorgeous and it certainly won't be another six years before we are back.

In between Unst and Uist

Finally back from Unst, Shetland, two days after seeing the Green Warbler

I missed basket weaving at the weekend but

Sue made this lovely fish to hang over the veg patch pond.

You can see too the reflection of one of the

willow dragonflies she made.

17th May
Mangetout picked again. Growing it in the polytunnel has been brilliant. We get a basket full every other day. I've underplanted it with sweetcorn and squash now, so once those get bigger it'll be whipped out just in time to continue harvesting from the outdoor plants.

I separated the last two lambs from their mums this morning. Weaning the lambs is a big step for them but they all seem to be doing ok on their own, there's just quite a lot of loud bleating at the moment! The one looking up at the camera is Rameses. He's given up asking us for his bottle feed now.

Finally we have a third gosling. I don't get goose nest sitting strategy. Unlike other birds, they seem to lay in each others' nests, all sit on each others' eggs, sometimes two on one nest and the eggs seem to hatch one at a time and very unpredictably. I did find one egg rolled away from the nest which had a full grown chick inside. There always seems to be a major issue for goslings cracking their way out.

18th May
I don't often moan, but today was a really crappy day. Work things. Best forgotten about. Maybe if the government set an example and valued teachers (not to mention doctors, nurses...) then parents might too. At least I've got things like this to come home to.

and this...

19th May
Lawns mowed, flower mixes sown.
The hen we put on ten chicken eggs a while back has done a hopeless job of sitting. Today I found her with yolk on her feathers and when I looked in the broody coop there are now only five eggs! What's more, they seem to have rolled all over the place so I'll be surprised if we get any hatch at all.
We'll start collecting the Ixworth eggs and try out the new incubator we bought a while back. It's more intensive for us but should give a bit better result.
20th May
I really struggle to grow sunflowers. Occasionally they spring up randomly round the garden, which I like, but when I sow them straight in the ground they either don't germinate or get eaten before they get a chance to get going. So instead I plant them in modules and plant them out when they're about a foot tall. I planted some at the back end of last week in amongst the mangel wurzels, where I also planted my sweetcorn today. But something ate most of them! To be honest, I suspect the peacock, as I know last year I had to protect my sweetcorn plants from the girl.
Anyway, it's a slower process but I've put tree protectors round the sunflowers and then netted the whole bed until everything gets growing really well.

On a different note, I'm pretty sure we have Ash dieback on the farm. It'll hopefully take a long time to impact on the old trees but some of the young saplings have completely died. Others though, are shooting healthy branches from the base again, so we'll see what happens with that one. I'm currently planting lots of quick growing trees and shrubs such as elder and willow as well as allowing hawthorns to self seed.

21st May
Sue was busy with her bees most of the day. She had to check if the rape honey they've collected had begun to set, as if you leave it too long it turns concrete. In the afternoon she attended another of the West Norfolk group's excellent training courses.
I meantime had a big day in the veg garden, only interrupted several times by the odd one of Sue's angry bees. Mostly I just got pestered but I did endure one sting to the head. I knew this one was going to sting by the buzzing which was more than just inquisitive. Hopefully next month Sue will be able to change the queens and passify the buy little Amazonians!

Back to the veg. I sowed all my climbing beans in pots - Borlotti, Armstrong, Gigantes, Kentucky Wonder Wax, Cobra and Pea Bean. I prefer climbing beans as they use vertical space and give form to the garden. They are also easier to pick, don't hang on the ground getting dirty and chewed by slugs, and crop over a longer period. They also dry better at the end of the season.

My carrot bed had completely disappeared beneath emerging marigold seedlings! But once I did some careful hoeing, there was actually a visible line of carrots and one of spring onions. Carrots seem to be extremely unpredictable so ay crop will be deemed a success. I've got them growing in a fleece frame this year so hopefully I'll get to enjoy my crop rather than simple feeding carrot fly larvae. The unpredictability of carrots is summed up by the fact that the line of Atomic Red I planted outside seem to have failed yet in the polytunnel the same seeds have all come through. It can't be that conditions outside are terrible as the other variety has come well. I just don't understand it.
Anyway, I have optimistically sowed more line of carrots and more lettuces to keep the succession going.

While I had the hoe out I uncovered the turnip and kohl rabi bed. It is apparent that all the seedling have been munched by flea beetles. The two plants which had got past them I decided to hoe up so I could start over. Maybe sowing later will have better luck, but just in case I'm sowing I modules tto so I can transplant when the plants are large enough to outgrow the chewing little insects.
I've also interplanted the rows with tagetes seedlings (French marigolds) as this has worked in the past. These pretty flowers smell strongly and are avoided by most creepy crawlies. Unfortunately they are tender, so I raise trays of them in the polytunnel to plant out about now when we should be frost free. This does mean that they can't protect early sowings though.

And lastly, I've taken my first harvest of new potatoes from the polytunnel. Here is the product of just one plant in the basket I made last week. They're not as small as they look - it's a big basket!

We literally stopped using the stored potatoes last week - they have started to soften and to sprout a lot. This means that our potatoes now last us right through the year.

Coming next: Going Completely Cuckoo on North Uist

Potato Potential

A couple of weeks ago I was digging the veg beds when I unearthed half a row of Arran Pilots. This is an Early and should really have been eaten before the Second Earlies - about June 2015.
But I've discovered this before, that Earlies actually stand surprisingly well in the ground. They seem to be very slug resistant and keep their flavour pretty well. Okay, not quite so tender as the first dugs but still very edible. What's more, they swell up nicely so you get a lot more potato for your money.

I've got plenty of spuds still in storage but freshly dug potatoes at the beginning of February is certainly quite a luxury. It's not something I would plan to do every year or rely on, but I've learned that if some of the Earlies don't come out when they're supposed to it's certainly not a disaster.

Some very late 'Earlies'.

But my thoughts since the Winter Solstice have turned more to 2016's potato crop. Each year most gardeners buy in seed potatoes which, when the time is right, get buried in the ground to magically sprout and flourish into leafy green plants with clusters of fresh potatoes hidden just below the surface of the soil.
Seed potatoes are not cheap to buy, but as I live in an agricultural region, it's fairly easy to find places which sell them in bulk. Buying them this way is ridiculously cheap but you don't always want 25kg of seed potatoes.  In fact, most people never want 25kg of seed potatoes. In total I grow about 15 to 20 kg and that is certainly not all one variety.
So for the last two years I have started a co-operative buying scheme for the Fenland Smallholders Club. I take orders and buy in as much as is needed. Now this is a great scheme for the bulk standard varieties, such as Arran Pilot, Desiree, Charlotte and Picasso, but until the scheme grows I just don't get enough orders to warrant buying the more unusual varieties.

Before we let everyone in

Fortunately I have a second option. Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group organise a Potato Day every year which is held in Huntington. They have about sixty varieties available at just £1/kg.  Potato days run all across the country and are a great way of buying seed potatoes - you get access to lots of different varieties at a good price. If you want to try lot of different types, you can buy just a few of each tuber too. The trouble is for me that the cost of petrol there and back outweighs the saving I make unless I can find another reason for being down that way.
This year I decided to help out with the setting up. There is a lot of lugging about to be done and I enjoy a bit of physical work. Besides that, the CSSG are a great group of people who I really enjoy spending time with.
As a member of CSSG, you get to pick your potatoes half an hour before the general public get let in. Not only does this mean you get to wander around at your own pace without the crowds, you also get to pick the best tubers. Not only that, but nothing will run out. Last year the Charlottes were gone by 11:17. The hall only opened to the public at 11! This year an extra sack was ordered.

As to which varieties I've chosen to grow this year, just read on.

But first to deal with a couple of questions which always crop up.


Do I need to buy in new 'seed' potatoes every year?
I don't know!!!  Of course, gardeners of old just saved their best potatoes from year to year and it is tempting to continue this tradition. Believe me, I'd love to. I keep searching the interweb and never come up with a definitive answer. What I do know, though, is that everybody I know does buy in fresh tubers every year, so I have decided to go with the flow on this one. At least I have managed to slash my costs. I cannot believe the prices that some of the bigger companies charge. Even with postage they are really taking the... potato.
The reason for buying in seed potatoes is to avoid the transfer of disease from year to year. The obvious disease is blight, which can overwinter in diseased tubers to emerge the next year. You still can't completely guard against it as it is windborne and can attack anyway, given the right weather conditions (hot and humid). However, it pays to take all precautions possible since it can wipe out an entire crop. But there are other pests and viruses, less well known, and I suspect the reason for them being less well-known is the modern practice of buying specially selected, virus-resistant potatoes. I looked up some information on how seed potatoes are graded and it was all a lot more complicated than I had imagined. It's not just a matter of growing potatoes in an area which is blight free (all our seed potatoes come down from Scotland) and then storing them in the right conditions. They are specially selected and there are percentage scores for occurrence of all sorts of nasties. There are limits and grades for how many generations of field grown crops the seed potatoes come from too.

Having said all this, I made a slight miscalculation with my Earlies this year. For the bulk order which I organise, I sold all the Arran Pilots without getting any myself. I had anticipated getting enough orders to buy a second sack, but that didn't materialise. I had intended on getting these planted in the polytunnel as early as possible in the year and didn't want to wait for potato day in the middle of February. (Potato day can't be much earlier than this otherwise many varieties haven't physically made their way down from Scotland yet.)
So I chose the very best of those Arran Pilots I dug up and put them straight back in the ground in the polutunnel for, hopefully, a very early crop of tasty new potatoes.

Is it worth growing my own potatoes?
Even if you've managed to source your seed potatoes economically, planting potatoes in spring is back-breaking work. Digging them up, especially if the soil has gone heavy and wet in autumn, is even more back-breaking. And if they catch blight or the slugs get to them, it can be soul-destroying too. So is it really worth growing your own spuds?
To that question I would answer a resounding YES for several reasons.

Firstly, have you ever wondered how, even with your tender loving care, you still end up losing potatoes, yet the farmers plant whole fields full of the things seemingly problem free. The answer is... chemicals. Slug pellets are liberally scattered, they are extensively sprayed throughout their growing lives and even after harvest they are sprayed to stop them sprouting. Personally, I'd prefer not to be eating all that.
Secondly, for each of my potato plants only one seed potato was transported down from Scotland. After that, nothing more than a fork and a wheelbarrow is needed. It really annoys me that we feel it necessary to import vegetables from all over the world just so we can have them out of season. Not only is there the environmental cost of the transport, but there are environmental costs to the countries they are grown in too and the economic benefits for those people are far from sustainable. So if you're going to buy chemical laden potatoes, at least buy them locally grown.
Thirdly, from April to October (at least) my potatoes come fresh from the ground. I have long been a believer that freshness, over every other factor, is why home grown tastes so good.
And if I've still not given enough reasons to persuade you, there's variety. You can get Maris Pipers, Picassos and 'Red Roosters' from the supermarket, but if you want Charlottes or Pink Fir Apples you'll be paying through the nose. Salad blue or Shetland Black will set you back a bob or two... or likely a lot more. And if you particularly wanted Blue Kestrel or Homeguard, then good luck finding those!
And that brings me on to my final question.

Which varieties should I grow?
Potatoes take up a fair amount of space, so if you're limited then it makes sense to grow just Earlies (take up space for less time, less prone to blight, more benefit of digging fresh) or more unusual varieties.
I have come to the conclusion that we should think of potatoes more in the way that we think of apples rather than bananas. There are many different varieties with different attributes. Different colours, different tastes, different uses, different textures, different harvest times. Different.
And for the grower, there are other factors - which potatoes are resistant to which pests and diseases, which potatoes do well in your ground, not that any year is the same as any other year!
At the Potato Day there were 60+ varieties available, which can be a bit bewildering to the individual.

So here are the varieties which I have more or less settled on:

Earlies

- Red Duke of York is a must. Not a traditional early, but the only early I know which is floury and makes excellent chips and roast.
- Arran Pilot or Dunluce. I think First Earlies are pretty interchangeable, although one year I tried Swift, which are supposed to be one of the very earliest, and was disappointed both with the yield and the taste. Other people love it though. Personally, for my super-earlies I prefer to use the polytunnel and have more choice of variety. As I'm growing Arran Pilot in the polytunnel, I've decided to grow Dunluce outside this year.

Second Earlies

- Charlottes are an absolute must. It is a prolific variety, stores well and tastes wonderful. I am flabbergasted at the price of these in the shops. They are actually one of the cheapest seed potatoes to buy.
- Kestrel. A new one for me last year. I was slightly disappointed with the yield, but the potatoes retained a very crunchy texture and the taste was good. The jury is out, so this year I have opted to grow just a dozen Blue Kestrel, which has the same qualities but is blue.
- Bonnie. This was on my absolute favourites list. It develops into big round potatoes which are fantastic for baking. I had two great years with this variety, but then the slugs seemed to find them so I haven't grown them for two years.
However, as I could buy just a few from the Potato Day, I've bought a dozen tubers to give it another go. I'll thoroughly dig the soil prior to planting and let the chickens in. Hopefully that way the slug problem will be eradicated before it starts.

Mains

- Desiree. A favourite of mine in terms of taste and in a good year produce massive tubers for baking. However, one year I had a poor harvest so decided to swap to Romano - an offspring of Desiree - but this too cropped disappointingly. So this year it's back to Desiree. It was in my bulk buy scheme and I had 4kg left for me so there'll be plenty!
- Picasso. Desiree is a red, so I needed a maincrop white too. I would have gone for a couple of organic favourites, Orla or Cara, or even King Edward, but Picasso won the vote of the bulk buy scheme and I had a load left over, so that's what I'll be growing.
- Markies. An experiment on the basis of someone else's recommendation. Again I just purchased a dozen tubers at Potato Day. If it does as well as reported, it'll become my go-to white maincrop.

Lates

- Pink Fir Apple. Because it's allegedly so late to develop, it is said to be very susceptible to blight. However, I have not found this. Even when we had very early blight and I had to chop off the tops I got a reasonable yield and virtually none of the blight got into the tubers. In fact, this year Pink Fir Apple gave by far my best yield of all varieties.
Some people don't like its knobbliness, but that's simple. It doesn't need peeling. Just a quick scrub and it boils (or even bakes) wonderfully, retaining a nice firm texture. It's a great one for slicing and putting into those midwinter casseroles.

So that's it. My potato buying advice.
Potatoes have a lot going for them, so go on, be bold! Don't just treat them as bulk carbohydrates. Try some different varieties and learn to appreciate them.
You can even grow them in bags. So get chitting!