Rogue potatoes

4 June 2009

Just to be clear again, I didn’t plant any potatoes this year. I planted potatoes last spring and then harvested many more potatoes than I’d planted a few months later. But evidently I didn’t manage to harvest them all, because the damn things keep springing up in my patch. Didn’t they read my plan? Don’t they know they’re not on it?

Digging down to get rid of the troublesome tuber it became clear how I managed to miss these spuds the first time around. Digging and digging, as I piled the soil up beside the hole I was making and it slid right back in again, I eventually found the tuber more than six inches below the surface. I think I’ve got them all now. Though of course it’s always possible that there’s one 12 inches down that just hasn’t made it to the surface yet.

As well as getting rid of the uninvited guests last Saturday, I also transplanted a couple of sweetcorn plants to stations where either no seed had germinated, or there was only the tiniest sign of life. Things are still taking a while to take off as the air remains quite cool, so I can’t tell yet which seedlings will be thinned out and which will stay. Haven’t they read my blog? Don’t they know I don’t like waiting?