Spuds Away!

And we're up and running. A remarkably fine Sunday gave us the chance to commit our first potatoes to the soil last weekend. We dug over one of the patches that we've inherited from our former plot-mate Toni, having been given the all-clear to take over her side the the allotment. A smattering of horse manure was worked in, the usual trenches dug and in they went. We only planted our first earlies, which were Rocket and some other unknown variety (someone managed to throw out the label...), with second earlies and main croppers to go in this weekend if I get round to it. I'll be digging solo, as Kasia is out of town.
There's something quite totemic about planting out your first spuds. It heralds an irresistable plunge forward into the season. "Are you'rs in yet or what?" has been the question from allotment-minded colleagues of late, with various views abounding on the right time to do so, and why. Although we've had a couple of light frosts since they went in I'm not too worried, figuring that the soil must be much warmer than at the same point last year, when it was still snowing.

Chitting away

All our spuds are from Wilkos this year. I spent a bit more last year on some more "interesting" varieties, but could discern little, if any, benefit in flavour or yield. In fact the best of the bunch was the one load of first earlies we got from Wilkos. Having the extra space this year means we're growing quite a few more. It'll be interesting to see if we can get significantly closer to spud self-sufficiency. Last seasons' efforts ran out towards the end of December.

Nice day for it

We also put in a load of Turbo onion sets on one of our newly aquired sections, and gave everything a good soaking. Easy to forget that things can get really dry at this time of year. More spuds to plant, seedlings to transplant and lots more seeds to sow. We're off!