First Potatoes

Time flies!
Not all the great plans for my allotment have not come to pass.

Some have however, and less than three months on we have lovely salad potatoes!

First crop of potatoes

Emily and I dug up two plants - one Nicola and one of the Salad Blues.
We got a nice little crop.

Blue through and through

After drying in the sun they promptly got boiled and served with butter. Lovely.

The blue ones taste just like ... well, fresh tasty salad potatoes!

I'll try and take a picture of the current state of the allotment.

I've not been able to dig a lot of it so weedkiller has had to be used to control the rampant grass!

New Allotment

So after waiting a long while we've finally got an allotment in the village. Woo Hoo!

These were all new plots in the top of a grass field near the existing allotments. Now, naively I (and the rest of the new plot holders) was expecting the plots to be nicely ploughed and and all tidy, ready for planting. Wrong! They simply rotovated the grass and chopped it up into little bits for us to clear or dig in. Thanks for that!

Our new rotovated allotment plot

With all the rain that's been falling lately today was the first real chance of getting to do any work on the plot. The first problem was what to do with the sods of grass. I decided that I just wanted to get my potatoes in and worry about the grass later. So after pegging out a path down one side of my plot, I pegged out my first bed. I raked off the grass and piled it all up at the end of the plot. I plan to either dig it in somewhere else on the plot or cover it in black plastic and let it the grass rot down.

First plot for potatoes

I then came home for a spot of lunch - and to give my back a rest. My back has never hurt before but something happened today and I'm not liking it! Emily and I then returned with all our seed potatoes which had been going mad chitting in the garage for what seems like ages.

Mixed potatoes ready for planting

I proceeded to dig the trenches whilst Emily put the potatoes in. I then filled the trench in with the soil from the next trench. After a couple of trenches I decided that I could actually lose some of those sods of grass in the trenches first. Better late then never I guess. Emily was also in charge of the admin of recording what potatoes were going where.

Emily planting potatoes

So this is what we've planted (I'm writing it here to remind me of what's what later, when I can't remember anything!)

• Pink Fir Apple, 13 tubers
• Pink Fir Apple, 11
• International Kidney, 11
• International Kidney, 8
• Salad Blue, 9
• Nicola, 10
• Sharpe's Express, 10

72 tubers in all. Can't wait to try them - especially the blue ones.

New Beginnings

Spring is around the corner and so Matt's Patch is being reborn. Yes - I'm back!

I have been given a new allotment in the village which means I should be able to spend more time there, or rather, it should be easier to pop in and do bits and bobs.
I hand over the cash and get to see where my plot is on March 5th.

In the mean time I have taken advantage of the slight warming of the weather to plant some seeds.

A week ago (Feb 19th) I planted the following:

• Tomatoes - Sweet Million F1
• Tomatoes - Alicante
• Peppers - multi-coloured rainbow mix
• Broad beans left over from a two years ago - will they work? I'll let you know!

Although I'll be getting a variety of potatoes from Coventry Market, I picked up a few of these blue ones while I have having a scout around the market stall. I think they're the same as these.

Been a while

My goodness I can't believe it's been sooooo long since I posted anything.

So, a quick round up of what's been going on is in order.

I've planted lettuces - lots of lettuces - and they've come up well and gone into the planter outside with a second crop in the greenhouse. I've been a bit more sparing with the seeds in this second lot as the first batch was far too many!

Hmm, maybe too many lettuce seeds

Last year's sweetcorn did not do very well at all and I think I read somewhere that they don't like their roots being disturbed so this year I've planted them in the inner cardboard tubes from loo rolls. You then put the whole thing in the the soil when you plant it out.

Sweetcorn, in toilet roll tubes

On the allotment front, the weeds and grass have been growing faster than I'd have thought possible - far faster than anything that I could grow myself!
I've been slowly digging out areas for planting, with this bed containing peas and runner beans. I've put mesh over the top to try and stop the birds having a free lunch.

Peas and beans under mesh

After a couple of weeks the peas have made an appearance - nothing much of note from the beans though. It's been far to cold and dry. May seems to have been quite a rubbish month so far.

The peas have come up despite the dry weather

The frost we had in early May has hit everyone's plants, potatoes especially. Luckily mine had not come up too much (they were planted on Easter Sunday) so the leaves they lost seem to have been replaced with new green growth. Hopefully they'll catch up. Somewhere I have a 'back-of-an-envelope' map of what varieties I planted where. I'll have to find it so I know what's what before too long.

Frostbitten potatoes

I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... ;-)

This year's potatoes

The other day I got my seed potatoes from Coventry market. All in all, I got just over 3kg for £4. When I counted them up, there were 75 tubers - I think I may have gone a bit over the top, oh well!

They're now sitting under the window in the garage, waiting for the weather to warm up a tad to get them chitting.

This season's potatoes chitting in the garage

This year I've gone for a few different varieties:

• Red Duke of York - 1st early. 10 tubers, 0.4kg
• Pentland Javelin - 1st early. 15 tubers, 0.5kg
• Kestrel - 2nd early. 23 tubers, 0.8kg
• Pink Fir Apple - salad. 11 tubers, 0.5kg
• Charlotte - salad, 16 tubers, 1kg

I think most interesting of all are the Pink Fir Apple ones which are long and knobbly - needless to say, you don't peel these! Despite their strange appearance they are supposed to taste great. Can't wait to find out.

Pink Fir Apple potato tubers

4-Bed Rotation System

In anticipation of preparing my allotment I've been looking into how the 4-Bed rotation system works. The idea is to have four beds and rotate the veg grown in them every year. The aim is to avoid a build-up of pests and diseases specific to certain vegetables.
Now the key is in the word rotation, rather than just swapping vegetable beds around, as this video from Gardener's World explains.

In a nutshell the order of rotation is:

1. Potatoes. Plant in well dug soil with lots of manure.
2. Legumes (peas, beans, etc). These will deposit nitrogen into the soil by storing it in their roots so make sure you leave the roots there at the end of the season.
3. Brassicas (broccoli, calabrese, cabbage, cauliflower, etc). These love the nitrogen that's been left by the legumes.
4. Root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, etc). These don't need huge amounts nutrients. Any excess will just go into the foliage and not increase the size of the root.

Onions and other alliums like leeks and garlic can go in with the legumes as they like the same kinds of conditions.

Each season you move the vegetables round in order, with the potatoes following the root vegetables after the ground has had a good dig and more manure.

Well that's the theory and it makes sense on paper. I wonder how it'll work in practice!

Some more information on 4-bed rotation is here.

Spud Issues

It's not all plain sailing in Matt's Patch. The other week I was out inspecting things and had a look at the potatoes that were growing at the end of the garden. This is what I found - all the foliage was just about dead!

Dead foliage - is this blight?

I've no idea what had caused it so I did a bit of digging (no pun intended) on the internet after hearing horror stories about blight.

Still not a lot wiser I read one article about blight that said you should cut off all the vegetation and burn it if possible. Then not dig the potatoes for a couple of weeks so that the blight that falls on the earth dies before the potatoes come up. So as a precaution I cut it all down and got rid.

When we returned from our week camping in Cornwall, Megan and I went to dig up the spuds - if there were any! Actually we got quite a lot:

Desiree and King Edwards

Ideally they'd have been left to grow for longer so that the King Edwards got bigger but that was not an option in this case.

Upon closer inspection some of the individual potatoes had lesions on them. Not all of them, and not all over the ones that did have them.

What is this?

Some of the potatoes had scabs on them

I now think that this is scab, probably Common Scab but if anyone knows for sure then please let me know and what I could have done to prevent or treat it.

All in all, not too bad for my first experiment with growing potatoes!

First Cucumber

This is our first cucumber - with plenty more to come

Tonight I picked our first cucumber. I thought it was plenty big enough and when measured it was about 12 inches long (more if you take the curve into account - the EU won't be pleased). Looking at the plants there are plenty more to come so we'll be having cucumber sandwiches all summer. Well, I'm more sure of having cucumbers than I am of having a summer! The variety is Aurelia F1 and it's an all female variety which means there are no male flowers to risk the fruit getting pollinated and going bitter. Saying that I have not tasted it yet! The four seeds were planted on 7th May so have produced fruit in about 9 weeks. They have been getting regular feeding once the flowers appeared so that should have helped.

Along with the cucumber I dug up the remaining Charlotte potatoes from the recycling container. We want to eat them on the weekend and I've dug them up now to give their skins time to mature. The others we've had have lost their skins during boiling and I think this is because they are too fresh.
This is the last of our early potatoes. The rest are King Edwards and Desiree which are still going strong in their corner of the garden.

Today's harvest - Charlotte potatoes and Aurelia F1 cucumber

Red Raspberry

I went out this early this evening to water a few things and this is what I found. A bright red raspberry, almost glowing in amongst the verdant green leaves of the canes. After calling the girls out (there will be a lot more competition for ripe raspberries as everyone likes them, as opposed to strawberries which Mrs Matt doesn't like - not even in Pimms!) and a lot of build up, the raspberry was not quite ripe so refused to budge! Patience is a virtue as they say.

This is our first raspberry to turn red

French bean harvest
After the local school fete Emily helped me go round the French bean plants and gather our first harvest. They're sneaky things and hide themselves very well in the stalks of the parent plant.

Emily (as a tiger) helped me harvest our first French Beans

Cucumber update
This is the latest picture of the most advanced cucumber - it's about 5 inches long. It seems to be quite wrinkly, as if it has all its skin and is slowly filling it up!

First cucumber is about 5 inches long now

Charlotte potatoes
After the somewhat disappointing showing of the Red Duke of Yorks I had a quick look at the Charlotte potatoes that are growing in the patch at the end of the garden. I thought the foliage was dying back a bit so decided to get the fork and have a snoop under the ground. What I found reassured me that all is well! I found a few good sized tubers and once I'd found some I could not resist digging both the plants up! We have cold roast chicken, fresh new potatoes and salad with our own lettuces. Excellent. We have more than twice the amount shown in the picture but Mrs Matt had started cooking them before I could get my camera out!

Some of the Charlottes from the potato patch

Potatoes!

On Saturday and with great anticipation Emily and I picked the two Red Duke of Yorks that had been growing well in an old recycling container on our patio. We turned it out and started rummaging through the compost expecting a bumper crop of spuds.
This is what we managed to get from two plants that had been growing since early April:

Red Duke of Yorks from two plants

In order to supplement the potatoes for the evening meal Em and I then picked the broad beans that were ready. It's probably a reasonable amount from four dwarf Sutton plants.

We picked all the broad beans that were ready

Once picked Em and her granddad set about shelling them. We offered the bean cases to Patch the guinea pig but, understandably, she turned her nose up at them!

Emily and her granddad shelling beans

One benefit of growing potatoes in containers is that they come out of compost a lot cleaner than out of the soil. Speaking of soil, I did plant one Red Duke of York down in the potato patch at the end of the garden. Emily and I dug up that plant but found nothing apart from one tiny little tuber. Anyway, after a nice cleanup the potatoes were ready for their weigh-in. They came in at 862g which is 1lb 14oz in old money. With the potato I snaffled a couple of weeks earlier, I reckon that's 2lb of spuds, 1lb per plant. I don't know how good that is. It doesn't sound a lot and I was expecting more. Maybe I should have watered more.

Beans and Pots all cleaned up and ready for the weigh in

So we enjoyed the potatoes and broad beans with some gammon and parsley sauce, eaten al fresco. Beautiful.

Pride before a fall

After the massive confidence boost of Saturday's potato find, we thought it would be nice to enjoy some of the beautiful potatoes with last night's dinner. So Emily and I headed off to the container where the Red Duke of Yorks are growing. Emily was holding the little basket ready for taking our treasures back to the house. I explained the rules of engagement, just in case: "If we only find small ones then we stop looking". After quite a bit of tentative searching in the potato equivalent of a lucky dip, this is what I found:

Not the biggest potatoes we've ever seen

These two monsters measured about 1cm each! Emily was keen to dig up the whole lot in the quest for bigger spuds but I got cold feet and abandoned the whole search. So it was heavy hearts and an empty basket that we headed back to the house. In fact we did find a bigger potato but it was half rotten and old looking - I'm fairly sure it was one of the seed potatoes that got planted originally.

Anyway, not to be out done, I put the tiny little marble-like potatoes in the oven whilst our dinner was cooking. Although they were very small, when they were cooked they still tasted great.

I've since been trying to find out when the potatoes should be ready. Reports vary from 1 week to 3 weeks after the first flowers appear. Now, our flowers appeared a good two weeks ago, and Saturday's potato can't be the only decent one there, surely. Maybe we gave up too soon. I think I'll wait until next weekend and then have a braver search.

First Potato!

Our very first Red Duke of York!

We have a potato! YES!

This morning Emily was looking at the potato plants in the containers and asking when they'd be ready. So I decided to have a furtle about in the Red Duke of Yorks. After a little blind searching this is what I came out with! I was well chuffed! Look at the great colour. Although Emily doesn't look too sure about it.

Em's wondering how it'll feed our family of four

We simply boiled it all on its lonesome (skin on of course) and ate it with some butter on it. It tasted great and everyone liked it. We might get some more up for tomorrow's evening meal.

I'm not sure what makes it so satisfying about growing potatoes. Maybe it's the same with other root vegetables. I think it's the fact that you are not certain you'll get anything until you start digging. With the regular vegetables that grow above ground you can see them getting a little bit bigger every day. But potatoes are different. It's like setting them off on autopilot when you plant the original tuber and hope that they do what they're supposed to do by the time you come to dig them up.

It Worked!

My new cucumbers have germinated! The packet said seedlings should appear in 3-5 days. I must admit I was sceptical. However after three days all four seeds have come good - so good in fact that I've had to get a bigger lid on my home made propagator! I'm going to leave them in there now for a few more days.

Germinated cucumbers in my home made propagator

Other News
This is the view of the potato patch. I've earthed them up twice but still they grow like things possessed! Maybe I'll do it one more time and then leave them alone. As for the ones in containers, they are full to the brim with earth so not a lot of choice with those!

Potatoes growing well

I have transplanted the best French Beans into their own individual pots (bottom of picture), along with 6 bell pepper plants (top-right). There is also one tomato plant which has not been used yet. The whole internet gardening fraternity seems to have gone mad on 'upside down tomatoes'. Here is another link. I may have a go at this - I've not decided yet, but it would be a shame to waste the plant by not doing anything with it.

French beans (bottom) and peppers (top right)

Beans: Broad but short!

Last year, in our old garden, we grew runner beans. They did very well, producing loads of beans but growing very tall, as they do. It's common knowledge that beanstalks grow very tall. In fact I recall one book I've read where the beanstalk reaches into the clouds. Even our little girls are aware of this documented occurrence!

Anyway, with this in mind, when choosing our broad beans I picked a dwarf variety (Sutton).
As you may have read previously, these have been planted out now. However they have not got very tall at all. So I did a bit of research and normal broad beans only grow to about 3ft any way! And I've got dwarf ones! 1.5ft - that's how high mine will get!

Well, they should still do well - they're in flower at the moment so hopefully will not be long before we get some proper produce from Matt's Patch (lettuce excluded).

One thing that has gone completely mad are the potatoes. I've earthed over the ones in the corner of the garden and as for the ones in the containers - they seem to be growing by a couple of inches a day, particularly the Red Duke of York. As soon as they get covered over, they've broken through again be the next morning! I hope they are growing equally well under the soil.

Patch's Patch

As the weather is getting warmer, we decided that Patch the guinea pig needed to be out in the garden more. So over the weekend I bought some wood and a roll of wire mesh and made a rudimentary run for her. She loves it! Now she can nibble grass and the odd dandelion all day long.
I still have a bit more to do on it, like make a shelter section down one end so she has somewhere to go if it's too sunny. I also need to treat it with some pet-friendly preservative. Overall we're as pleased with it as Patch is!
Next woodwork lesson is making a planter ...

Potatoes are sprouting!
Had a quick look at the early potatoes that were planted in the containers and they've sprouted already! The Red Duke of York are growing faster than the Charlotte ones. Strangely I expected all the leaves to be green, but they're red (or purple) for the Yorks. Time to cover them over again soon!

Potatoes a go go

They're in! After a month of nurturing them, giving them the best start we could, the time came when our little potatoes had to go out into the big wide world on their own.

Emily and Megan helped clean out the old recycling boxes ready for the early varieties (Red Duke of York and Charlotte). I was going to put all earlies in the boxes but looking at them I felt the containers were a bit small so only a couple of potatoes went in each.

After a good clean to get rid of the traces of ketchup and other gunk we put gravel in the bottom and covered with about six inches of compost which had been mixed with bonemeal and super phosphate. Then in went the seed potatoes (very carefully) and we gave them a good soak.

Emily and I then dug up the corner of the garden near the raspberry canes. More bonemeal and super phosphate got mixed in and then the King Edwards and Desirees along with the remaining earlies. They're in there somewhere!

I made a little map of what went where which may come in handy later! I think I'm going to miss the little spuds. They've been sitting very happily on the window sill chitting away. However I don't think Mrs Matt will miss them as it means the blinds can now be shut without the risk of breaking off a tiny potato shoot!

Another job we managed to do was put out the strawberry plants into a reasonably sunny patch. In total there are 8 plants there - 3 Cambridge Favourite and the remainder are 'unknown' (thanks Hillary!)

April Fools

Well it seems like ages since I posted anything but time has not stood still in Matt's Patch - far from it. We're into April and have had a good few days of sunny weather. A lot of the garden has sprung into life and it's very interesting seeing what happens. Plants that we never knew were there suddenly burst into flower. Even one of our strawberry plants has gone mad and produced a flower! They're still in their pots as we have not had time to plant them out yet.

The sole courgette plant has been re-potted into something bigger. Out of a packet of 6 seeds, I initially planted 4. Only one germinated. Boo. So the other day I decided to soak the two remaining seeds overnight and planted them the following morning, just to see if that would help speed up the process at all.

I have also planted some French Dwarf Beans, some straight out of the packet and some soaked overnight. There were a couple of days between the normal ones and the soaked ones being planed so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

After what seemed like ages of nothing happening with the pepper seeds, they seem to have decided that conditions are now right and have come up quite well. Which is more than I can say about the cucumbers. There were only 5 in the packet so they all got planted. One came up (eventually) so I poked around in the other pots. A couple seemed to have germinated but either were too deep and could not get above ground level. In order to help them I removed some of the earth from around the yellowish leaves (yellow due to lack of light) and they seem to be moving on a bit now. I'll be lucky if I get three plants from that lot.

Better news on the Broad Bean front. There are some decent plants coming along now. I'm still staggered by how complicated the leaf structure is compared to everything else which just seems to have a pair of leaves initially. The broad beans are more like a complete plant folded up very carefully which slowly opens out.

The lettuces are also doing well. The first crop have been moved out into troughs along with a few of the spinach plants that came up. As a little present for them I've just bought some nitrogen-rich fertiliser to help their leaves! As for the other salad crops the land cress is going great guns and I have planted a 2nd crop of them. Well, when I say 'another crop' I really mean another pot. I put some rocket seeds down last weekend and within two days they had germinated. They're doing very well. With such speedy growth it's no wonder it's called rocket!

Last but not least all the seed potatoes have chitted very well and will have to go in the ground this weekend. I think some can go in the now-redundant recycling bins but the main crop ones will have to go in the garden beds somewhere. I've got some bonemeal for a slow release feed and also some phosphorus which had pictures of root vegetables on the box!

Movement at last

I'm pleased (and relieved) to say that over the past few days there has been a bit of progress in the seedling department of Matt's Patch.
One of the three courgettes has decided to come out and play. This is the first time I've grown courgettes so I'm very surprised by the size of the little fellow. Two great big leaves that seemed to appear from nowhere. I know the seeds are bigger than other things like pepper and tomato but the size of these leaves is ridiculous! They were instantly big!

A couple of the broad beans have also popped their heads up along with a solitary tomato plant. No news as yet from the peppers or the cucumbers. I'm readying the search party.

The salad leaves are doing well (mixed lettuce, land cress and spinach). I've sown a second crop of lettuce seeds so that there will be a constant supply for the slugs. Wouldn't want them going hungry!

A friend of ours has kindly given us some strawberry plants from their garden so now we have nine plants in total. The new ones are not as far on as the shop-bought ones but they're all doing well and I can almost see a strawberry jam production line being set up ...

Emily's sweetcorn (Incredible F1) have also been planted. To help get them started I soaked them in tepid water for about 20 mins prior to planting. The last time we grew sweetcorn they were simply rubbed with butter, covered in foil and put on the barbecue within a few minutes of being picked and tasted beautiful!

Since moving my potatoes to the sun room in the house they are doing much better with the additional light. I still have to get their containers sorted.

Strawberry Fields

In our last house Emily had a very successful strawberry patch and we want to grow a new one in Matt's Patch. So over the weekend when we were in the local garden centre we bought three young strawberry plants. I never know which ones to get, but this problem was solved by the fact that they really only had one variety - Cambridge Favourite. I've since looked it up and it seems that this variety is popular with the 'pick your own' growers as they are flavoursome and hold up well on the plants. We shall see.

There are already raspberry canes in the garden and we had some nice fruit off them when we first moved in. I'm toying with the idea of putting the strawberry plants in the same area, to create a fruit corner, but I don't think there'll be enough sun as it's surrounded by some bushes that I moved that were blocking off the whole corner.

At the moment the strawbs are still in their pots in the greenhouse. I'm treating them like a new pet, where you have to let them get used to their new home before you let them out.

Potatoes
A few days ago I have moved my seed potatoes into the sun room at the back of the house as I was worried that they were not getting enough light in the garage to do their chitting. They seem to be doing better now but that could be my imagination. I'll just have to make sure that two-year-old Megan does not discover them!

Seeds
I'm starting to get anxious about the seeds I've planted. So far only the lettuce and land cress have decided to have any inclination of joining Matt's Patch. The seeds have been in for about two and a half weeks now and not a sign. I think I need to be more patient.
Emily also wants to grow some sweetcorn so I bought some yesterday and we'll hopefully get them in pots tonight.