We have crop

Here we are, halfway through August, still negotiating the social distancing rules and although the lock-down has been relaxed, it is still very much in force and slowly becoming what the politicians billed as "The new normal", whatever that is... 

When we started this journey, back in late February, I had no expectations of  actually getting a crop of any kind. We bought some seed potatoes and chitted them in the shed. These we planed in the first strip of land we cleared. After a while of constant inspection of our two small mounded rows, we were beginning to think that nothing was going to happen and got on with the clearing. Then all of a sudden, shoots started to appear and before long we had a good healthy looking patch of potato plants.

Too late we realised the rows were too close...

All of a sudden, it all seemed worthwhile. As the plants grew, we realised the first of our 'schoolboy' errors. We had not planted the rows far enough apart, or from the edge of the plot to be able to earth them up. We had to just leave them and wait and see what happened. We ended up with a really good crop of delicious extra early potatoes, a first for us as we have not grown any potatoes before, being rather restricted for space, when we lived in London. 

While that was going on, we continued to clear the plot and sow seeds, lots of seeds. Our second schoolboy error. How many tomato plants do you really need? we had hundreds of them from several different varieties. Not wishing to waist anything, we pricked out far too many and had tomato plants filling the great majority of our three-inch pots! As we own a good number of pots in this size, something was obviously not right here. After a bit of a reality check, we gave away as many as we could and just kept eight of each, still far too many, but it seemed a shame to just compost them. At that time of the year, you can't give the plants away. Seems like we were not alone in being a bit overenthusiastic.

We grew a few tomatoes!

I planted six each of four varieties on the plot, and potted on two of each as spares just in case I lost any. In the end, those eight were potted up into ten-inch pots and stood in front of the shed, where they are now producing even more tomatoes. Nine other plants have spent the summer keeping warm in the greenhouse. For those of you who can't be bothered to add that lot up, that is forty-one plants. On top of that we have another six plants in the garden at home!   

Ralph.