Planting potatoes

After surviving church with a newborn (a new nail-biting sport where you spend every other second checking that the baby is still asleep and praying desperately she won’t scream in the middle of the service!) – we decided to celebrate her sleeping through the entire thing by plodding down to the allotment in the glorious April sunshine to dig in our potato crop.

We arrived down on site and a few of the usual suspects were there enjoying the weather and the inevitable cuppa. So greetings overwith, my other half grabbed a spade whilst I selected our bags of first and second early’s. We decided to plant the potatoes down the bottom end of our top plot. The last two years we have had potatoes growing in the top section of the plot near the shed so it was time to rest the soil there and plant afresh elsewhere.

In order to distinguish between the early’s and the main crop potatoes, we planted two rows of onion sets – when I say we, I really mean my husband. I was carrying the baby and was therefore taking the vitally important role of Planting Supervisor.

The top plot is really coming along – luckily I have managed to entice my long suffering friend Fiona to help out on Tuesday! We plan to tackle the bottom plot, she doesn’t know this yet!

Emily has gone broody and as we don’t plan to hatch our own chicks again this year we have lent her to Chris the site warden to have her hatch some of his bantum eggs. She is successfully installed in a small hutch on Chris’ plot, away from the chaos of the main enclosure with the other four Warrens (Masie, Doris, Annie and Evie). Holly and Molly (the Vorwerks) and Polly and Dolly  (the Cream Legbars) are still staying with Geoff’s chickens until the shed arrives.

Before we left, we planted two types of French beans, runner beans and Cayenne peppers (the latter exclusively for my husband!). Let’s hope they work better than last year’s epic failure!

This is the bottom plot currently – all change hopefully!