Chitting potatoes

In the newsletter mentioned below Alan Roman wrote:

“Chitting” is no longer regarded as essential. It is a hangover from mid Victorian times when all varieties were late maincrops requiring a long growing season. Modern varieties have a shorter “biological clock” and if they are started early they finish early with loss of potential yield. Better to keep them cool with the smallest possible bud and plant into warm soil. It is always possible to bring on a small number of earlies for earliest possible crop by chitting in a warm room".

This just adds to the perennial debate about whether or not you should chit your potatoes. Our seed potatoes usually arrive well before we want to plant them and so we tend to have no choice about whether to let them sprout a little or not. Maybe this year it will be different.

Maybe the bottom line is do what works for you and maybe it just doesn't really matter one way or another!

We have ordered several varieties of potatoes. We always do this as in this way usually the conditions suit at least some of the varieties grown and we have a decent crop that sees us through the year.

This year we have ordered Charlotte, International Kidney, Juliette, Lady Christil, Nadine, Nicola, Red Duke of York, Sarpo Mira and Ulster Chieftain. We tend to go for salad varieties as we find they suffer less from slug damage.

If you haven't bought your seed potatoes yet, Alan Roman has a good range of varieties with information about each one that helps in choosing a potato right for you and where you grow your potatoes. Click here for their website.

Even the birds are talking about the weather!

There seems to only one thing to occupy us at the moment and that is keeping the birds supplied with food and water as the snow continues to keep on coming.

People are reporting record numbers of blackbirds in their gardens squabbling over any food being put out for them. Someone counted 15 of them at one time.

We ordered some new raspberry canes this year which were due to arrive this week. On Monday we had an email from Keepers saying because of the very cold weather and frozen ground they were unable to lift and dispatch them at present. They promise to resume deliveries as soon as weather permits. This was followed yesterday by a newsletter from Alan Roman saying our seed potato order will not be dispatched until the weather improves.

We're happy as this means we won't have to worry about what to do with plants etc arriving in freezing conditions.

All our seeds are now ordered and so it's just a case of holding tight for conditions to improve and parcels to arrive. (And hoping we don't run out of bird seed - I wonder whether they would eat old vegetable seeds - maybe not!)

Web Site Revamp

I've thought for a while that my website home page was a bit messy and so I have spent a little time revamping it. I hope it will also make it a bit easy to find your way around the different sections. Many people stumble across the website when trying to access information about contaminated manure but it's not just about manure so visit some of the other pages too. Any ideas for improvements are always welcome.