Holiday time

Well, we are off to New York on Thursday, and staying in London village tomorrow night so just tidied up a few little jobs before we go.  

These are potatoes that have grown from shop bought ones that sprouted in the fridge. I cut the eyes out with a sliver of potato and popped them into roottrainers. They are growing nicely. 

They will go into pots once our greenhouse us up and running [2nd May]

This is a potato grown from seed; not a seed potato - I am talking about the seeds inside the fruit that formed on last year's potatoes after the flower fell off. It was germinated on kitchen roll, and transferred  to this 3 inch pot. After I took this, I repotted it into a deeper pot and it will go into the greenhouse until it in turn flowers and fruits. 

Moon Trial GW Harvest

I have today dug up and weighed GW

Sown on Oct 13th

Harvested on April 14th

6 months in the soil

Weights prior to sowing:

10, 9, 8, 11, 6

weights at harvest:

41, 29, 36, 36, 24

Overall increase in clove weight 382%

Moon Trial GB Harvest

I have today dug up and weighed GB

Sown on Oct 9th

Harvested on April 9th

6 months in the soil

Weights prior to sowing:

9, 12, 9, 7, 10

weights at harvest:

38, 44, 42, 34, 46

Overall increase in clove weight 440%

Cloves significantly bigger than the last harvest; foliage healthy with a slight browning. No splitting visible but the loves have almost all lost the original clove covering [no gooeyness on the outside]. 

Using loo roll insides

Alot of gardeners will use the insides of loo rolls to sow long rooted plants such as peas and beans. I have a huge number to plant this year, and once I knew this, I started collecting them [last summer]. 

I started to get quite a collection, so I had to work out how to store them otherwise Mark would be chucking the whole lot out when we ran out of space. 

So, I have been folding them and storing them as shown:

This means, once they come out, they can be used as squares, rather than as rolls:

They can then be used to split square pots as such:

This gives you 4 separate areas within one pot.

Or, as below, where you can have 9 different areas within one pot

Moon Trial GV Harvest

I dug up and weighed GV 

Sown on 16th Sept

Harvested on 17th March

6 months in the soil

weights prior to sowing:

13, 13, 9, 6, 10

weights at harvest"

34, 17, 24, 19, 16

Overall increase in clove weight: 169%

2 have split cloves, with all foliage healthy with slight browning at the edges