... the Lord has made me wait a bloody long time.
Thought they'd never be ready. This is the latest I've ever dug the first potato plant. Two seasons back, we had our first spuds in mid May.
When they're small, they're perfectly delicious. Boiled with mint and served simply with butter and parsley, new potatoes are one of the great gastronomic treats.
The mere thought has got me slavering. Excuse me while I nip off and cook these...
These few days of torrential rain have been great for the potatoes; it's been very dry, and I feared for them.
Early flowers
I've even got a flower or two, so the first spuds are almost ready. This is a highlight of the vegetable gardening year.
Potato virus
Less good is that one plant has a virus. In tomatoes, which come from the same plant family, rolled leaves are a sign of health. In spuds, the opposite. Viruses are usually the cause.
To be safe, I should destroy the plant... which irritates, because certified seed potatoes are supposed to be virus free. That's why you pay through the nose for them.
Hey ho. Heads, they win. Tails, you lose. Anyone else got viruses?
I've never been so pleased to see a potato. Thought they'd never make it.
How good was yesterday? The sun shone like it meant business, and I got a little burned. Did two hours of sowing, weeding and diverse agriculture.
I even acquired a blister. It's been about 18 months since it was possible to work outside long enough to get one of them.
But don't pack away the hot water bottle. It's back to pissing rain and March temperatures next week.
No polythene required yesterday (sorry Gina!). From an inauspicious start, it became a gorgeous day – the first that's felt anything like Spring proper.
So I got the wretched spuds planted and did some weeding. It's so long since I did any sustained digging and bending that I was soon sweating like a rapist.
And bafflingly, I got shit all over my face. This perplexed the wife: "Why are you planting potatoes with your head?"
Right, that's it. Enough's enough. The allotment's getting these bloody maincrop spuds TODAY.
They should have been planted a week ago. But of course that was impossible.
*Insert weather rant here*
So I'm planting them today – come rain, shine, snow or an ice storm from Hell itself. Even if I have to dress up in polythene like the farmer in Withnail.
My Duke of York first earlies have been chitting for a month. The sprouting stems look so freaky; purple, misshapen and macabre. I got a bit carried away with the computer and did some funky arty ones:
These are going in the ground this weekend – weather permitting. I'll be earthing them up by mid April – weather permitting. And I should get edible spuds in late May – weather per... ah, sod it. You get the picture.
Time to get this allotment blog back on track. Enough buggering around. Let's grow vegetables.
I've been dead productive this morning. Got the potatoes out to chit and sowed a tray of celeriac. This isn't as daft as it sounds; celeriac needs a long growing season, and the sooner you start, the bigger they get.
These should germinate in about 10 days. I'll transplant them to individual pots in late Feb. Then it's a small matter of keeping them thoroughly watered until October.
Which won't be a problem if 2008 is anything like 2007.
Midwinter storage check: To my surprise, the blighty potatoes haven't rotted in store. Sure, they're sprouting a bit. But that's normal, and no big deal.
A word on storing potatoes. They must be stored in the dark, or they sprout within weeks.
And whatever you do, DON'T keep them in sub-zero temperatures. Like parsnips, their starch turns to sugar and you'll get a sweet taste – which isn't very nice. Too-cold storage also ruins their chipping quality.
Astoundingly, the mildewed onions have also done OK. I've had to chuck away a few, but that's a breathtaking result given their lousy condition at harvest.
Apparently the gods didn't entirely abandon me in 2007.
Here's next year's potato bed, cleared and manured. I'll dig it through in November when the soil's cooled a bit and the weeds stop growing.
I'm so paranoid about clubroot that I have a 5-year crop rotation: Potatoes; alliums and pulses; brassicas; roots; sweetcorn and cucurbits. The brassicas always follow the alliums and pulses, because pea and bean roots fix nitrogen in the soil. The root bed is never manured: parsnips and carrots fang on freshly manured ground.
What with the weather, the smell of manure and the shortening days, I'm getting a serious dose of seasonal melancholy. When the clocks go back in a fortnight I'll be totally gutted.
