Buying Seed Potatoes, Sarpo Mira and Harvesting Leeks

Sarpo Potatoes

I got an email from Larry who has mastered the mystical arts of sending such things telling me that Stapely garden centre was selling bags of Sarpo Mira so we nipped over in the morning and bought 2.5kg of seed potatoes. I was going to use some of this years as seed but it is safer to use fresh certified disease free tubers and the cost was just ?4.29. Buying them online is great but you end up with carriage costs, so this seemed the best option.

Harvesting Leeks

Tuesday and today, Wednesday, have followed the same pattern. Down to the plot around 3pm where there were two people on the site Larry and Willy. I must admit I’m amazed anyone else is nutty enough to go onto the plot when it’s this bitter.

Still, as I mentioned in the forums and had the micky taken out of me about by the aforementioned fellow nutcases, I was quite warm enough in my long thermals that I bought for a February trip I made to Norway.

I had planted some Autumn Giant 2 Argenta leeks and these had produced very long straight stems with little bulbing at the base. I think that they would have produced a long blanche if they had been collared. Lovely as they are, they seem susceptible to rust and don’t stand as well as the other variety I grew, a heritage leek called Lyon.

So that patch was cleared and dug over.

In the Greenhouse

The internal sides for the deep beds were finished and the beds roughly single dug. Despite being inside, the soil was pretty wet, which surprised me a bit. I then added seven wheelbarrow loads of leafmould, which was spread over the surface.

I’ll leave things to settle for a bit and then run the Mantis over to break up and mix everything up before filling the beds with compost and making up the central path.