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Mine now look really very ugly:
How are you planting your tatties........-imageuploadedbygrow-your-own-forum1370014263.427988.jpg
How are you planting your tatties........-imageuploadedbygrow-your-own-forum1370014276.696323.jpg
How are you planting your tatties........-imageuploadedbygrow-your-own-forum1370014263.427988.jpg
How are you planting your tatties........-imageuploadedbygrow-your-own-forum1370014276.696323.jpg
Getting back to the original question: Late, very very late !
My tatties have been chitting away on windowsills until I am sick of the sight of them, and I am sure it is mutual. They are almost as old and wrinkly as me.
The night-time temperatures near the village have only just started to rise above frost-danger level within the last week; we had snow last Wednesday. So the first four tatties that I planted further up Deeside a month or so ago, I hear have done nothing; as the ground had snow upon it within hours, I rather thought that might be.
My second bed, planted within Aberdeen so at a much warmer altitude, has four Sarpo Kilfi and two Red Duke Of York. The bed is two boards high, six feet long by three wide, and started off empty; I stuck in a couple of inches of almost-rotted compost from a builder's bag, made holes, added Mycorrhizal whatsit (very important that
), stuck 'em in, covered them and watered them. I will add layers of grass cuttings, leaf mould compost and soil whenever the stems get tall enough, and leave them as late as possible to harvest (apart from the RDOY's) on the assumption that they will continue to bulk up over winter. The grass seems to insulate quite well too, I have been amazed at how low a temperature my tatties have withstood in the ground without frosting.Tomorrow - at long last !!! - I will plant the majority of my spuds. Osprey, RDOY, Sarpo Axona, Mira, Blue Danube, and Kilfi, with a few Anons and a couple of Estimas I think, plus two lonely Edzell Blues. It's not my ground and I have been made an offer I can't refuse - that of a tractor plough to help remove dockens - so it looks like I will perforce be planting into a trench. I actually want to plant into a layer of leaf mould - I have two builder's bags worth for just that purpose - because the water retentive properties of that I think were what gave me enormous tatties last year, and I am expecting a scorcher of a summer this year; needless to say, the leaf mould is a couple of miles away, and I of course have no vehicle.
But any old how, even if I have to scrape holes with my teeth - my tatties are going in the ground...
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