Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Purple bed

The purple bed is the most boring of the beds in my rotation, but also the one that I am probably guaranteed the best crop. It is my potato bed - the picture below shows the potatoes after their first earthing up. There will also be a second earthing up as the plants grow bigger.



I have seen small amounts of frost damage on a couple of the plants ( a blackening of some of the leaves), however this shouldn't impede them too much as its only minimal damage.

This is my first time planting potatoes in a raised bed, so I am interested to see what the yield will be like compared to the ones grown directly in the soil.


Though this year, my owns in the soil were very late going down - it was late April before they were planted whereas I would have preferred to get them down mid-March - the tradition being to have them planted by St. Patricks day. But we had a lot of other landscaping and moving of soil before the bed could be prepared.
I have a lot of rock picking to do in this bed - will potter along with it as the months go on - will probably not get it all complete this year - but hopefully by next year it will be in good condition.

I have also tried going 3 potato tubers in this pot - nearly ready for its first earthing up. I just want to see how they do and what yield we can get from potatoes even in a pot. Though the pot doesn't look very large here, its probably about 24inches wide at the top and about the same in height. Not sure if its big enough for 3 tubers, but again its only a little side experiment.

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