Positive Potato Progress!

Aside from the usual bad weather, Britain's May Day Bank Holiday 2010 will be remembered (by myself at least) as the days my potatoes starting showing. A few weeks after the chitted tubers went into the ground, tight clusters of leaves are breaking their way through the soil and showing that life on the London Vegetable Garden allotment is very much underway.

The picture at the top of the page may look rather resplendent; however the truth is that these plants are still very small – I include a picture of my hand for scale!



Anyway, it really was great to see progress, especially considering the carrots are looking, well, non-existent! I need to prepare the bed more thoroughly, but this is another topic for another post – I digress! You may recall that I purchased some potato growing bags several weeks back. Well, I filled 2 of those this Bank Holiday Monday, both of which are in close proximity to my sprouting potato plants, so it will be interesting to compare results.

I filled these bags up with approximately 15cm of compost (which I had purchased beforehand), placed 3 chitted tubers in each (Juliette, 'main crop' variety), and covered loosely with around 10cm of soil. I gave these a good water and now wait to see if they'll shoot up as quickly as my 'Rocket' early crop!