Potatoes and periwinkles
It's the beginning of April next week, but who would believe it after
looking out the window at the falling snow and listening to the
howling easterly winds from the comfort of the warm indoors. It just
doesn't seem to have warmed up at all since last December and
yesterday the snow lay thick upon the ground with temperatures
plummeting to minus 3 in the garden. It's much too cold for gardening
and our seeds, sown to fill scores of hanging baskets and containers,
are really struggling to germinate. It's also much too cold to be
planting out our first early potatoes in the veg garden and with only
three months growing season for these delicious, new salad potatoes,
they'll have to work hard to catch up with the harvest from previous
seasons crops.
We normally plant out our first early seed potatoes during the second
week in March, but it's been far to cold and wet to be putting them
outside in the ground just yet. We started chitting them (leaving them
indoors in a warm, bright spot to encourage their eyes to sprout and
thicken) in old egg trays during January, giving them a couple of
months to strengthen their growing buds (eyes) in readiness for
planting outside.
This year we're trying an experiment, we're trying to cheat the
elements a little by planting a few of our first early potatoes in
plant pots, inside the poly-tunnel. All of our volunteers have chosen
a seed potato from the tray and planted it up into a large, ten inch
plastic pot. They placed a layer of multi-purpose compost, about an
inch deep in the base of the plant pot and placed a seed potato on the
surface, with its sprouting buds uppermost. The potato was then
totally covered with more compost until it was buried about an inch
deep under the surface. Throughout the coming months, as the potato
plant grows and its leafy haulm pushes through the compost, we will
bury it again with a little more compost, repeating the process again
and again until early may when the plant pot should be filled to the
top, with its leafy haulm rising proud above the surface of the
compost. This will give the potato plant another five/six weeks to
develop, ready for harvesting in mid-june.
The potato isn't a root vegetable, it's a swollen tuber that grows on
the stem of the plant, rather like its close relative the tomato. By
burying the stem of the potato plant gradually, over the period of a
month or so, we should be able to blanch the developing young potatoes
and also beat the elements by keeping them in the relative warmth of
the polytunnel until the weather improves.
One plant that hasn't seemed to mind the cold spring weather is the
ground cover plant periwinkle. We have quite a lot of it in our one
and a half acre community garden. It spreads quite rapidly,
propagating itself by sending out runners which root themselves into
the ground wherever the touch the surface of the soil. They have
really pretty blue flowers which blossom on any new growth, leaving
last years growth to scramble across the ground looking for somewhere
new to root themselves. This week our garden volunteers have been
digging up and potting on some of these young plants before they put
on too much spring growth and before they spread throughout the bed.
Properly maintained, these beautiful harbingers of spring will remain
as compact plants, filled every spring with dozens of flowers but,
left to their own devices they will spread all over the place.
This week we've potted the young periwinkle plants, about 30 of them,
into three inch pots filled with multi-purpose potting compost before
placing them in a shady spot behind the poly tunnel. They'll still get
plenty of light there, but very little direct sunlight. It's the roots
of the periwinkle and not the leaves or the flowers that we want to
develop. This will give the young plants a good head start in life and
give it the foundations upon which to grow for many years to come.
It's the beginning of April next week, but who would believe it after
looking out the window at the falling snow and listening to the
howling easterly winds from the comfort of the warm indoors. It just
doesn't seem to have warmed up at all since last December and
yesterday the snow lay thick upon the ground with temperatures
plummeting to minus 3 in the garden. It's much too cold for gardening
and our seeds, sown to fill scores of hanging baskets and containers,
are really struggling to germinate. It's also much too cold to be
planting out our first early potatoes in the veg garden and with only
three months growing season for these delicious, new salad potatoes,
they'll have to work hard to catch up with the harvest from previous
seasons crops.
We normally plant out our first early seed potatoes during the second
week in March, but it's been far to cold and wet to be putting them
outside in the ground just yet. We started chitting them (leaving them
indoors in a warm, bright spot to encourage their eyes to sprout and
thicken) in old egg trays during January, giving them a couple of
months to strengthen their growing buds (eyes) in readiness for
planting outside.
This year we're trying an experiment, we're trying to cheat the
elements a little by planting a few of our first early potatoes in
plant pots, inside the poly-tunnel. All of our volunteers have chosen
a seed potato from the tray and planted it up into a large, ten inch
plastic pot. They placed a layer of multi-purpose compost, about an
inch deep in the base of the plant pot and placed a seed potato on the
surface, with its sprouting buds uppermost. The potato was then
totally covered with more compost until it was buried about an inch
deep under the surface. Throughout the coming months, as the potato
plant grows and its leafy haulm pushes through the compost, we will
bury it again with a little more compost, repeating the process again
and again until early may when the plant pot should be filled to the
top, with its leafy haulm rising proud above the surface of the
compost. This will give the potato plant another five/six weeks to
develop, ready for harvesting in mid-june.
The potato isn't a root vegetable, it's a swollen tuber that grows on
the stem of the plant, rather like its close relative the tomato. By
burying the stem of the potato plant gradually, over the period of a
month or so, we should be able to blanch the developing young potatoes
and also beat the elements by keeping them in the relative warmth of
the polytunnel until the weather improves.
One plant that hasn't seemed to mind the cold spring weather is the
ground cover plant periwinkle. We have quite a lot of it in our one
and a half acre community garden. It spreads quite rapidly,
propagating itself by sending out runners which root themselves into
the ground wherever the touch the surface of the soil. They have
really pretty blue flowers which blossom on any new growth, leaving
last years growth to scramble across the ground looking for somewhere
new to root themselves. This week our garden volunteers have been
digging up and potting on some of these young plants before they put
on too much spring growth and before they spread throughout the bed.
Properly maintained, these beautiful harbingers of spring will remain
as compact plants, filled every spring with dozens of flowers but,
left to their own devices they will spread all over the place.
This week we've potted the young periwinkle plants, about 30 of them,
into three inch pots filled with multi-purpose potting compost before
placing them in a shady spot behind the poly tunnel. They'll still get
plenty of light there, but very little direct sunlight. It's the roots
of the periwinkle and not the leaves or the flowers that we want to
develop. This will give the young plants a good head start in life and
give it the foundations upon which to grow for many years to come.