Veggie meal

We had a meal tonight which included 10 vegetables from the garden! Stuffed courgette with salad and potatoes. The courgette was no 1 stuffed using tomatoes and poblano pepper. The salad included pea shoots, radishes, radish pods, chives, garlic chive flowers, strawberries and my Nicola potatoes, which were very good.

Potato harvest

I harvested the potato crop on 26th August. I was very pleased with the result. I gave them no real care and they were in the worst corner of the garden, using the mound from the old haybale which had been full of tree roots. Five pounds from ten seed potatoes may not seem much but for that unproductive patch it's worth repeating.

Nicola

A change of tack this year. Not satisfied with the return from pots or bags of potatoes, I decided to put some in the ground. I'm using the patch near the greenhouse where the remnants of the haybale and a mess of roots are slowly rotting away. Ten Nicola seed potatoes have been planted here. They will not get much attention. I'll be interested to see what I get.

I bought some summer bulbs today as well. Two lilies, eight gladioli and some liatris. The lilies will go in a pot. The others into the pink garden behind the frog. I'm trying to fill it out a bit.

First Sarpos

My ten-inch pots with a single Sarpo Mira seed potato have yellowing foliage and don't look like there's much more in them so I decided to drop one of them today and see what was inside.  The roots were very strong with a lot of potatoes looking very healthy. Perhaps they would have done a bit more. But still it gave 600g of good potatoes, more than the average of my Pentland Javelin pots. So I have high hopes for the other two pots and even higher hopes for the 30 litre bags to come later.

The pot was planted up on 31st March,  118 days ago.

The empty pot has been replanted with six leeks using the same compost rejuvenated with some blood, fish and bone.

Update: The other two 10 inch pots gave 610g each. So a good average for a small pot.

The first 30l sack was turned out on 12 August. Only 840g with a lot of scab so not very successful. The haulms were dying but the potatoes were very immature. 2nd sack gave 1092g with some good big ones! 3rd - 703g !  4th - 944g 5th 578g in one big one!

Xtra!  A sprouted "shop potato" was grown in a clay pot with unimproved garden soil and a handful of blood, fish & bone. Harvested on Oct 19th it gave 880g of good size and quality potatoes. I won't be paying for seed potatoes any more!

The fridge saved pentland javelins planted in July have been harvested. They gave a fair crop of very good quality.

Pentland Javelin revealed

It was time to see how my ten-inch pots of Pentland Javelin were doing today. The foliage had begun to yellow (and been eaten by something too) so the potatoes were not going to grow any more.

 

So I cut off the greens and turned up the pot.  First views looked promising.

Then I noticed the extras. I was not expecting an ants nest in there!

But the potatoes were not affected. A fairly reasonable crop of 441g. That's near enough to a pound for me.

The compost is now back in the pot with a sprinkle of blood, fish and bone and another Pentland Javelin seed potato. This one was in the fridge from January till June 6th. It was then put in a yoghurt pot with some compost. It had about 3-inch sprouts when it went into the big pot today. I'm hoping this should give a crop in November. Wait and see!

Next pots - 410g, 620g, 360g (Average - 457.5g, a pound!)
Each pot was replanted with the saved seed potatoes.

September 30th.
First two "late planted" pots gave 445g between them of good quality new potatoes.

First potatoes

I opened up one pot of my Pentland Javelins yesterday. 4 potatoes of fair size for earlies - about 6 ounces. That's after 130 days but it has been unusually cold most of this time. I'll wait at least two weeks before trying another pot. The tops are still growing well. Perhaps I should wait till they start to yellow.

The Sarpo Miras are beginning to flower! That's after just 66 days. Should I take the flowers off before they set seeds? The RHS website states that it makes little difference to crop but nobody says it makes things worse so i'll do it! (But I didn't!)

More potting

Yesterday, I put out the rest of my squash/courgette varieties into pots. One of each variety is still waiting to go into the haybale bed. (They went in on 29th) I also potted a "left over" red kitchen potato that had sprouted in the cupboard. This is an experiment to see if that gives decent results, but I don't know the variety. (Maybe Désirée)

The day before, I potted on the eleven tomato plants (right) that are waiting to go into the broad bean bed. We ate broad beans in their pods last night. (They were lovely!) So the tomatoes may not have to wait too long.

The foxgloves (left) sown last June are flowering now, along with the hesperis and putting on a good show. The vipers bugloss are getting enormous and nearly ready to flower. The James Grieve apple tree appears to have set about 200 fruits!

Sarpos

I planted my sarpo mira potatoes on 31st March. 6 growing bags had 3 plants each and 3 ten litre pots had 1 each. my growing medium was made up from leaf mould and last year's spent potato bags and a bit of sieved gravel compost. It was all enriched with BFB at a rate of about 1 ounce per plant.

They are all sitting in the greenhouse now. The early sown pentland javelin are still in there too, just showing about an inch above the soil.

Throw in the Javelin!

My first potatoes went in yesterday. 5 Pentland Javelin into pots (10 litre).  Each one went on a bed of Jack's Magic compost enriched with about an ounce of blood, fish and bone and was covered with more Jack's. They will sit in the greenhouse until they are showing well.

Pentland Javelin

I bought 10 seed potatoes yesterday. (£1.99). Five are set up to chit in the conservatory at the moment and the other five are in the fridge to save for a "second crop" planting, probably in July. I'm following the experiment from "Home Grown Veg" on YouTube.

Try again!

On Thursday I potted up my late sowings of courgette (Golden Zuccini) and the first Butterpie squash into large pots for the summer outdoors. Must remember this next year. The early ones were hopeless. I still have some small things trying to get going. It seems there is no recovery from an early check to growth. I used a 50:50 mix of the growbag material with my leaf mould as the medium for these.

My potatoes look fairly good. I saw some peeking through the surface today so I did a topping off with sandy garden soil to keep the tubers in the dark.

Potatoes

I planted my potatoes on Monday. 3 x 3 King Edwards and 3 x 3 Rockets in potato bags 3 x 2 and a 1 rockets in pots. The rest of the rockets went into my turf pile and the spare King Edwards went into my waste soil pile. Pots and bags had a sprinkle of Growmore too. Bags had multi purpose peat based compost. Pots had a bag of topsoil. let's see how they all compare!

Potatoes and peppers

I set up the potatoes for chitting in my conservatory a couple of days ago. Two kg each of Rocket and King Edward. They already had small sprouts.

Today I sowed seed for my sweet peppers. Three jiffies each for supermarket Ramiro seeds and California Wonder. Two seeds in each jiffie. Ramiro have always done well in the conservatory. 21 peppers off one plant last year between August and November.