Potatoes

Most of the potatoes have been planted by digging a trench, about a spade width and depth, plonking the chitted potatoes in, eyes up, and scooping the soil back over the top, leaving enough soil in the ridge for earthing up in about a months time.




Below are pictures of the first earlies going in, Pentland Javelin, I decided to plant this row by digging an individual hole per potato, just an experiment to see the benefit of trenches.

Onions

Also in April - the onion sets and shallots got put in - all 43thousand of them. If I never see another onion set in my life it'll be too soon.




Fed the Japanese onions that went in back in the Autumn - Senshyu Yellow. Used chicken pellet manure.

Lavender plants from seed

I got a free packet of seed for a fragrant lavender called Spicea Rosea. Sowed them last summer and they're getting to be quite nice little plants now. They can go into my lavender hedge when they're big enough.

Carrot tubs

These were a great success last year so I changed the compost in the bins, making it light and sandy and sowed myself a swirl of 'rainbow' carrots and diagonal lines of 'purple haze'. I used the sand to mark out where I put the small seeds so I can see them when they germinate. Any container above the ground by 18" is said to be too tall for the carrot fly and they don't lay their eggs.

Planting parsnips

I decided to use a slightly different method of germination with my parsnips this year. Back in March I scattered the seed on wet paper towels to speed up the process. The ones that germinated got planted in rows of sand sprinkled on a prepared bed at the beginning of April. This just means they've hit the ground running rather than sitting in cold soil deciding they may or may not germinate. Anyway I'll let you know how this experiment works.

Saving salsify seeds