Planting Potatoes, Garlic, Shallots

Another bit of glorious weather gets me out on the plot. It’s been pretty cold but when the sun shines from a blue sky it feels warmer. A gamble with some potatoes, some serious planting and setting up for the forthcoming season.

New Raised Beds set up by the polytunnel

Planting Potatoes

It’s very early for planting potatoes around here. but it’s worth a try with few tubers. The worst case is we have a cold snap and lose them. The best case is that we get some very early potatoes to carry us through until the later planted ones are ready to harvest.

I’ve got a four foot square raised bed in the polytunnel which is filled with multi-purpose compost. It had early potatoes last year which were followed by leeks. The texture is great for growing clean potatoes but it’s nutrients are used up. So about four handfuls of potato fertiliser were mixed into the surface to give it a good nutrient base.

I planted 9 tubers of Casablanca into the compost. They’re not really chitted as such but they’re showing green spots where the sprouts will form. I grew Casablanca for the first time last year and was impressed. They’re an excellent potato. Quite vigorous with good yield and excellent flavour, Casablanca have replaced Arran Pilot as my banker potato.

Next I watered to settle everything down. Rather than just use water, I mixed up 10 litres of S-Chelate trace element fertiliser and used that. Just as the main (NPK) nutrients will have depleted, so will any trace elements. Just having one element in short supply will constrain growth in the same way as a person becomes ill from missing one vitamin.

Raised Beds

2M X 1M Raised Bed set up by Brassica Tunnel

Outside the polytunnel we’ve set up raised beds. Originally I’d intended to have 4 beds, all 3M long. However, when it came to setting them up the area wasn’t as level as it looked at first. So we ended up with two 4 metre long and two 2 metre long beds with the 4m beds and one of the 2 metre beds by the polytunnel. Set up other 2 metre bed by the brassica tunnel and started filling it with well rotted manure.

Planting Garlic, Elephant Garlic & Shallots

Gave the beds by the tunnel some extra fertiliser, a handful per metre run of potato feed plus some additional potash. The two metre by one metre bed took five rows of garlic (Solent Wight) spaced 15cm apart in the rows.

The four metre bed nearest the polytunnel I’m reserving for potatoes so planted the further bed. The reason being that the potatoes have a lot more leaf and may shade the alliums. I had some six seed garlic cloves over so planted those followed by 40 shallots Golden Gourmet in three rows set 20cm apart in the rows. Finally I planted the elephant garlic. They went in 3 rows about 30cm apart in the row.

I don’t know how the elephant garlic will do, it really should have gone in last year. Still, it’s early spring and the soil in the beds is very rich so maybe it will be OK. Last year I grew too much for our own consumption but I was playing with an idea about growing it to supply as seed. Anyway, sense has prevailed and I’ll stick to writing.