After last Monday's rainfall, which give or take a little bit, amounted to April's average amount, the rest of the week wasn't too wet and occasionally we even saw a little bit of sunshine. The temperatures managed to reach around average for early April during the daytime but we did have a couple of chilly nights.
 |
| Temperature & Rainfall Records 02-08 April 2018 |
We decided to head to the plot on Sunday afternoon to plant our early potatoes and if we had time our six trial varieties for this year. Luckily the beds for these potatoes had already been prepared so no digging or cultivating the ground was required.
 |
| Planting Our Trial Potatoes |
For a good number of years now we have planted all our potatoes by digging a hole with a trowel and just popping the potato into the hole. We've had good crops this way and when we first trialled this method we didn't notice any difference in yields so have continued to plant our potatoes like this ever since. Our trial varieties were planted through weed control fabric. However, as we lift our early potatoes - Casablanca - as and when required we find it easier to harvest them if they're planted without any weed control fabric.
 |
| Casablanca Potatoes |
We're now stuck for planting any more potatoes as the bed for our main crop varieties hasn't been prepared.
The bed on the right of the photo covered with pea sticks will be our main crop potato bed this year. After planting was completed, I cleared away the pea sticks and lifted the weed control fabric that had been covering this bed. Hopefully, we'll get a few decent days to allow the bed to dry out before I set about it with the cultivator.
The weed fabric was folded up and moved and the bed will now be left to dry off enough to be dug over. The forecast is for the weather to be unsettled this week with more rain so it might be a while before this bed does any drying out.
Posts
I knew you wouldn't hold off as long as you threatened!
ReplyDeleteStuck now though Mal. I had a couple of beds ready for our earlies and trial potatoes but I need to dig a bed over for our maincrop ones. It was too wet to dig it on Sunday and another 16.0mm of rain overnight Monday into Tuesday isn't going to help. It's still raining 09:30 Tuesday morning.
DeleteAwesome update Martyn thank you for sharing and have a blessed day to both you and Sue
ReplyDelete