Strawberries, brassicas, bees wax and hedgehogs

Strawberries are delicious, but they are not as easy to grow as it might seem. The problem is that the strawberry bed loses productivity over the years.
So I have abandoned our old strawberry patch which really hasn't been very productive for a couple of years. But I cannot turn over a new area to strawberries every few years.

The old strawberry patch

Instead I have come up with a cunning plan. I purchased three dozen new plants of three varieties to spread the harvest period and have allocated them three beds in with the roots quarter of my rotation. Next year they will stay there and I will use the suckers to populate three more beds in next year's roots quarter. Then the same the next year. In the fourth year, the first beds will come out and as the strawberries rotate around the beds I will change which beds they occupy.
Incorporating the strawberries into the vegetable rotation is an idea I got from the legendary Lawrence D Hills, founder of the organic growing movement.
There is a big potential downside. I have also read warnings not to do this as strawberries are susceptible to verticillium wilt, a disease which also affects other crops, notably potatoes. But it is a risk I am going to take. The rewards outweigh the risk.
I purchased my strawberry bare root strawberry plants back in January. This is a bit late so they may not produce fruit this year but that doesn't matter too much as Wimbledon is cancelled anyhow! I potted them up for the roots to develop and waited for the worst of winter to pass.
Today they moved out into the big wide world. Hopefully they will like their new home.

The rest of the day was spent preparing veg beds. Under the no dig regime this should just be a matter of a quick hoe then piling compost on top of the beds. It should have been done back in the autumn or winter. However, I was pretty much incapacitated due to my back. Also I did not at the time have sufficient compost to achieve this, though cardboard could have been used to block the light.
And so the most neglected beds are now well on the way to reverting back to grassland! The transition to no dig is a gradual one anyway. Although in theory you can eradicate nasty perennial weeds over time by continual covering and pulling, I find that it is better in the first instance to dig out the really tenacious ones like couch grass, dock and creeping buttercup. This takes a lot of time and effort when the bed has been neglected.
I spent too much time on it in one day and my back suffered as a result. I find I need to do lots of different jobs and avoid too much of any one task in a day, especially if it involves bending down too much. I am not very bendy any more!

A quicker job was hoeing the beds with easier weeds, such as feverfew, dead nettle, groundsel and chickweed. With the soil surface dry and compost not yet applied, this was an easy job with the oscillating hoe.

Before my body gave up I covered the new beds with a thin layer of compost.

Next morning it was time to plant up some turnips and radish plants. I sowed these a while back in modules. The turnips are Snowball and Purple Top Milan. I also grow Golden Ball but this is an autumn turnip. The radishes are a right old mixture, including a new variety called Watermelon Radish. Unfortunately these need covering as a physical barrier against flea beetle and turnip root fly. I was already using the turnip netting to cover my new plantings of onions, calabrese and spinach.

Erecting netting takes time, mainly configuring the limited selection of poles to fit the new space each year. I was very happy with the system I came up with this year. The turnips have a higher mesh which will give them space to grow underneath and give me space to weed, thin and harvest from both sides.



Where the turnip mesh was has become my brassica cage for this year. This covers four beds. The main purpose is to protect against cabbage white butterflies, though I have invested in a biological solution this year so it doesn't need to be quite so watertight. It does however provide good protection against pigeon attack too.
I use soft butterfly netting. It is slightly more expensive but much tougher and less prone to ripping. It's quite an investment so needs to last from year to year.

Today I evicted the chickens and ducks from the veg patch too. Their services are useful for slug control but they also have a penchant for soft young spinach and brassica leaves!
I have put all the poultry together in the big pen. Fortunately there was no aggro. The four ducks set straight to work snuzzling through the grass and the six ex free-range hens stick together and are more than capable of looking after themselves.

Moving them out of the veg plot also means I can leave the polytunnel doors open now, as temperatures soar above 40 degrees whenever the sun comes out.



While I've been starting to fill the veg plot with crops, Sue has been using her time to sort out her bee frames. The bees are starting to produce honey now and we need more frames for them to store their honey in. The old frames are pretty gunky with honey and wax and propolis. Sue cut the old wax frames out and melted down the mixture in a special vessel to produce clean wax. The cloth that she strains the mixture through makes fantastic firelighters

Next the wooden frames needed cleaning. Sue boiled up a washing soda solution in her cauldron  and in went the frames. With all the gunk loosened she was able to scrape them clean.
I've made this job sound simple but with so many frames it kept Sue busy for a couple of days.
Now I just have to help her put the new wax foundation sheets into the frames. This is a job for evenings.




Arthur has been busy too. He is obsessed with hedgehogs
Arthur rarely barks unless someone passes the front gate. He doesn't bark if he is stuck in somewhere or if he needs to go out. But he does bark at hedgehogs. So a single bark heard outside was a sure sign that a hedgehog needed rescuing. Arthur has learned to pick hedgehogs up without getting a nose full of spines so I was not surprised to find this scene on the back lawn.
Unlike our labradoodle Boris, Arthur rarely plays with toys or chases a ball. But there is one exception. Notice anything about his favourite ball?

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 Monday

A sad start to Easter Monday as it was time to dispatch the Muscovy duck that we reared last year. He had grown into a big boy but, to the displeasure of the boss male, he had also taken a liking to the females.
For quite a while now this had made putting the ducks away at night a bit of a nightmare. Every night the chickens and geese put themselves away, the turkeys and guinea fowl go up on the fence, but the ducks loiter outside until I appear to put them away. The female and the boss male then go into the house as a group, bobbing their heads at each other and hissing in a friendly fashion. It's not unusual for two to get wedged in the door as their efforts to go one at a time go awry.
Once in, the old male turns around and guards the door.

Boss male with his girls

The problem comes when the young male, who has been hanging around hiding, then needs to be put away.  For he is scared of the dominant male and every time he attempts to enter the house he comes running back out again. Leaving him outside is not an option as he doesn't go up on the fence and would otherwise end up as fox food. However much we have tried, he won't do the sensible thing and go into alternative overnight accommodation.
So the only answer is to chase him round and round the pen until it is the easier option for him to brave going into the house.

This has been an inconvenience, but in the last few days he has started being pecked in the house. He was always destined for the plate anyway, but this made the matter more pressing.

So this morning I caught him straight from his overnight accommodation (a risky operation as he was a big, strong boy and Muscovy ducks have sharp claws) and did the deed.

While I was doing this (and well before, while I was still in bed), Sue had been a busy bee in the kitchen.

I went down to the kitchen to find a Rhubarb and Orange Crumble made with our own hazelnuts in the topping. Yummy!
Sue had been at the bottle again too. She had bottle up her plum brandy and sloe vodka and put some rhubarb and ginger vodka to start as well as sloe port.

That should help us through lockdown!

It was a much chillier day today so I chose an indoor task, pricking out the celeriac seedlings and planting them individually into modules. This is a fiddly task and the seedlings need to be treated very delicately. I selected the strongest 40 seedlings from the small tray of maybe twice that number. They can now go to the polytunnel to grow on before they are planted outside. It will be a long while before they are ready to harvest.

40 celeriac seedlings in the polytunnel

next to sugar snap peas and red onions

I spent the early afternoon planting another couple of beds of potatoes before we turned our attention back to the Muscovy duck, now hanging out in the stable.

Muscovy ducks have three layers of feathers and plucking them dry is a Herculean task, so instead we dunk them in boiling water for 3 1/2 minutes which makes plucking far easier.
We do the plucking in the stable which makes for easily sweeping up the feathers to go on the compost heap. We did have to keep the geese away though so they wouldn't see what was happening.

One was sitting on the nest so we left her there, a much safer option for us. We have the same problem with the geese as we had with the Muscovys. Last year's sole offspring is a young male and is get harassed. Fortunately he has the sense to spend the nights in the separate stable we have allotted to him.









While we were clearing up I decided to sort out last year's onions. We didn't manage to use them all before their inbuilt senses kicked in and they sprouted fresh growth. So I sorted them out and moved those which were still ok to the fridge.
Unfortunately no animals or birds will eat onions so any excess grown cannot be used for them.

Final job of the day was to mend the roof of the chicken house. The overnight winds had whipped off the felt. To be fair, I had been looking at it for a while thinking that it needed replacing.

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.

Easter Sunday Lockdown Blog Resurrection

Well how things have moved on since I returned from Thailand and had to go into self isolation for a few days as I brought a cough back with me. I've actually been in isolation again since then, but whether or not I've had the actual virus is unknown.

Coronavirus has turned the world upside down, but as smallholders we are in a pretty fortunate position compared to many others. We have plenty of outdoor space in which to spend our time and keep busy. In many respects things haven't changed too much for us, except we have a little more time to do what we enjoy doing. We are fairly self sufficient too, although this is traditionally the hungry gap.

One of our chooks struts past 

an early asparagus stem

Unlike much of the country, we have eggs coming out of our ears - hen eggs, duck eggs, turkey eggs, goose eggs. Rhubarb has been on tap for a while now and the first asparagus tips have rocketed from their winter hibernation (necessitating a quick emergency weeding session!)
We still have some vegetables which have stood over winter - plenty of parsnips and leeks though they are past their best.
We haven't yet learned how to grow loo roll!

There have been other benefits - a much quieter road and the cheapest heating oil we've ever seen. In fact coronavirus has given the earth a chance to breath and just maybe lockdown will give people a chance to reflect on their lives and habits. I will write another post about this soon.

The dogs on lockdown

But for now there is no excuse for not getting this blog back up and running again. In many ways the digital world has come to our rescue, so the resurrection of my blog can be my little contribution to that!

I won't try to cover everything we've been up to here since I've been back from Thailand, but lockdown has given us a good chance to keep on top of things without having to work 25/8.
For now, here's a few photos from the last couple of days

These two hives down in the orchard are very strong and active.

Sue has been busy with her bees. We are down to six very strong colonies and they are already making honey. Three colonies did not make it through the winter as numbers had dwindled too far or lost their laying queen. Six hives is more manageable for Sue, though swarm season will be upon us soon. Sue has already found a queen cell in one of the hives.

We have put all the hives up on hive stands which makes for working at a better height and easier lifting as beekeeping can be heavy work.

The fruit trees are coming into blossom now and with fine weather we should hopefully get a good fruit crop this year.

The paddocks have now dried out and the grass has started its spring growth. We are not lambing this year but it is now safe to move the rams back in with the ewes. They were super excited (!!!) to be reunited. Things have settled back down now and the three boys have stopped chasing the girls around.

With a little more time on our hands we have been having a good tidy up. I have adopted a strict no plastic policy, so every shred of plastic I find on the smallholding gets collected. We've gone round and picked up all the old bits of wood and half rotten pallets too and enjoyed a rare bonfire. This is a great chance to burn materials which can't be composted, such as the old raspberry canes which I pruned but prefer to burn to limit disease.

The bonfire kept me warm

on a chillier nicmig night.

This was the night of a Supermoon, 

a term which seems to be used

every time there is a full moon these days.

Although my twitching has been curtailed, like many other birders I have discovered a new form of my hobby. It's called nocmigging (nocturnal migration) and involves sitting out in the dark listening for bird calls. There is the option of simply placing a microphone outside and then reviewing the recording in the morning, but I prefer to hear the birds as they fly over. Conditions for this have been perfect. Nights have been warm and dry and the road and skies devoid of engine noise. It has meant many late nights, but late mornings don't really matter at the moment.

It has been fascinating doing this. Firstly I have added seven new species to the list. What flies over in the day is quite different, it seems, to what you see during the day. It has been good to hear owls on territory too. We now have tawnies firmly established alongside the little and barn owls.

As well as the birds, I hear dogs, cows, sheep and even a donkey.
And on the wildlife front there is the occasional rat, barking roe deer and one night I could hear fox cubs excitedly shrieking when they were brought food.
This is a little worrying as we have already lost one chicken which did not go to bed one night and our brown Muscovy girl has been missing for a week.
The turkeys are laying now and the girls do not go up on the fence every night either.

Growing our own food has continued apace too. This is a very busy time of year raising young plants from seed. There is a conveyor belt of seeds and they are now beginning to go in the ground.

I never thought I'd say this, but we could actually do with some rain!

Sue, Boris and the chickens getting involved.

Here we planted calabrese and rat-tailed radish (grown for edible seed pods).

We left the poached egg plants and red dead-nettles in situ,

but took out more persistent weeds like couch grass, docks and creeping buttercup.

Trays of summer salad ready to be planted out.

My Corona

I have just returned from an amazing birding trip to Thailand with three good friends of mine. For reasons of carbon emissions I limit myself to one foreign holiday per year. I used to travel much more, but I actually look back on these less frequent trips with much more fondness.
Unfortunately, because of our responsibilities on the smallholding, my foreign trips are never with Sue, one of the downsides of our good life.

The Thailand trip was complicated even before we went by the onset of corona-virus. The cheap flights we had booked went via Guangzhou, China. Expediency dictated that we rebook more expensive flights via the Middle East, a call which was justified on our return as the original return flight showed on the info boards as cancelled.
I won't go into details of the Thailand trip any further, except to say the company was good, the weather was hot and dry, food and accommodation, all booked on the hoof, were great and the birding was dawn till dusk - and often beyond for finding owls and nightjars - and brilliant.

While I was in Thailand with not a drop of rain the whole time and temperatures of 37 degrees (C not F) unfortunately Britain continued to be battered by storms and lashed with rain. This made things hard for Sue as sheep paddocks became flooded and the land became even muddier.

Sue sent me pictures of our 'land'

I felt a bit guilty that I was enjoying myself in such tropical conditions. One small niggle was that I developed a sniffle and a cough. This happened last time I travelled abroad too. It seems to start the minute I hit the air pollution of a big city and I don't think air conditioning helps it much.
As you can imagine, we jested about this being corona-virus for much of the trip. I know it's a tragic matter, but you have to keep things in perspective. Over 3000 people have now died worldwide of the virus compared to 40000 per day of TB and goodness knows how may of flu. But what's scary is that this is new and nobody really knows where it will go.

The fifteen day break progressed and the cough lingered as corona-virus started to spread around the world. Most of our time was spent in the countryside where we saw  few people wearing face masks and caught snippets of news when we could get WiFi.
But Bangkok airport was a different matter. Masks everywhere, check-in questions about China and even a separate departure procedure for flights to high risk areas. British government advice had evolved too and it was becoming clear that my protracted cough may have repercussions on my return.

So after a 39 hour journey back home I rang 111 on Tuesday morning expecting long delays, but got through to somebody after just a couple of minutes. There followed a further three phone calls. At one point I was told a team in full protective suits would be coming to the farm - what consternation that would cause amongst the neighbours! However, that was downgraded and by 1pm I was surreptitiously positioned in my car in the drop off bay outside Peterborough City Hospital.
I stayed in the car awaiting a phone call from Ben, who then poked his head out from the frosted door on which was a poster entitled CORONA POD. Ben had a full gown, face mask and visor and protective trousers and shoe covers.
I furtively snuck into the corona pod. There was no-one else present. I answered a few questions, swabs were taken and I was handed information about self isolation.
Results should be back in a couple of days, but even if they are negative I still have to remain isolated for two weeks.

I have moved into the downstairs bedroom, which thankfully has a bathroom too. Sue leaves food packages outside the door for me and when I make trips to the kitchen every door handle, knob and anything I touch needs to be wiped clean. Thankfully we have a dishwasher which eases complications with sharing utensils. All my rubbish has to be kept in one bag and double bagged when it is full. If I test positive (about 0.000001% chance) special arrangements come into place for its disposal.

Looking on the positive side, I have plenty of time to write my blog. And to update my bird lists, to monitor my seeds, to start off new planting and to catch up with all the jobs that were delayed by my absence.

I get two weeks off work and don't have to interact with people.

The house will be super clean too. When I do venture outside my hermit cave I carry a bottle of disinfectant spray and wipe every surface I touch.

ed: I didn't publish this blog post for fear of crosses being daubed on my front door!!!
But it has now been confirmed that I do not have corona-virus. Even better, advice has changed regarding my need to stay in self-isolation for the remainder of the two week period.
Presumably this is something to do with the fact that UK now has significantly more cases than Thailand.
On the plus side, I can now sit in the same room as Sue again, stroke the dogs and cats and I don't have to wipe every surface I touch. On the negative side, I am expected back at work on Monday and have to interact with other humans again.

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.