Soilman

Right, it’s all change. No more non-gardening, non-blogging and non-doing.

This weekend, a multitude of jobs WILL get done:

• Planting raspberries (maybe even staking them and rigging wiring for support)
• Planting First Early potatoes
• Planting onion sets
• Digging up remaining Jerusalem artichokes and replanting a new row
• Digging over roots bed
• Weeding
• Hoeing
• Saving the planet and getting the girl

All in a day’s work for New Soilman (it’s like New Labour: full of promises and relaunches, but always the same old bollocks).

Spring is within view, at last; when the seed potato order arrives, it’s not far off.

I’m being very unadventurous: Desiree, Orla, Kerr’s Pink. The only slightly unusual one is Ratte, a terrific French second early/early maincrop that I’ve become fond of. Utterly delicious salad potato.

Who knows? I may even go to the allotment at some point. After, er, a month’s absence.

I found this enormous Desirée potato this morning. By mistake: left it in the ground when I was digging the row last week.

Question: How the bloody hell could I miss something this big?

Another question: Can you top it with something bigger?

Email me any pics of huge potatoes (or comically misshapen ones) and I’ll post up the entries for laughs.

Harvested the last of the spuds today. Very disappointing; small tubers and not many of them. Two 15ft rows filled only half a sack. Normally I get a sackful and a bit.

I’m assuming it was the hot, dry June. Great for sweetcorn, but not ideal for potatoes, which do a lot of their top growth in June. Even with that wet July, the haulms didn’t grow as big as usual.

Hey ho. Forced optimism is not – as you may already know – my bag. But the great thing about gardening is that there’s always next year.

PS OMG… things could be worse

At this time of year, I’d normally be ranting about courgettes: how many I’ve got, how quickly they turn into marrows, how I can’t get rid of them etc etc.

(See? I almost went off on one there).

But I’m not going to inflict that upon you (not today, anyway). Instead, I want to sing the praises of the Ratte potato.

Granted, it’s French. But that’s a small black mark against a spud that is truly excellent in every other way. Its yield is prodigious (albeit with small-ish tubers in a dry Spring), it tolerates a bit of blight, tastes absolutely delicious and is very versatile in cookery. As a salad potato, it beats Charlotte hands down.

In short, Ratte gets the Soilman Mark of Full Approval. For what that’s worth.

If you’re looking to try a new early (they grow fine as second earlies – ready in mid to late June), you could do worse than this one.

Thick and fast now, thick and fast. It’s all going crazy.

We have Ratte potatoes, Orla potatoes, All-the-year-round cauliflowers, Early Nantes carrots, Bolthardy beetroot and Russian courgette/squash hybrids (don’t know what these are called in English, but they’re known as ‘Kobachok’ in Russian).

The missus and I are stuffed to the gills with veg every night.

Well, they’ve arrived. Could be a tad bigger, if I were being picky, but I suppose it’s only early June.

We had the first spuds on Sunday, and in truth I need to wait a little longer. One-plant-per-diner isn’t fabulously economical.

Having said that, small new potatoes are lip-smackingly delicious when fresh. I could scoff them until I’m sick. And beyond, probably.

About bloody time. Jeez. It feels like YEARS since I planted these Orla spuds. First Earlies… my arse.

Anyway, they’re here now. And they’re flowering, so maybe I can risk digging one up.

Tomorrow’s the night. Fresh, toothsome, earthy new potatoes for supper… or disappointment?

Anyone been digging their spuds for weeks already and laughing at my feeble efforts? Now’s the time to crow if you have to…

Ratte potatoes aren’t strictly first earlies. OK, so they’re not even earlies – by the book.

But if you bung ‘em in with your first earlies they make a decent size by mid July, and that’s when I most like them. They make the most utterly delicious salad potatoes.

By the way, dear reader: do you earth up all in one go at planting time… or earth up bit by bit as the haulms grow? I have a lively debate with other gardeners about this, because I’m convinced you get bigger plants and more potatoes by earthing up gradually.

Anyone gonna persuade me I’m wrong!?

I’ve been planting First Early potatoes. Always an exciting time – it means Spring is minutes away.

This year it’s Orla (a trusty favourite – early, disease-resistant, tasty) and Ratte. OK, so Ratte is strictly a maincrop potato, but you can harvest it as a second early if you plant in March.

Lots of folks hereabouts dig trenches and lay old newspaper and grass clippings underneath the spuds. The idea is to help conserve moisture. Frankly, I can’t be arsed; life’s too short. So I stuff them in with a bulb planter.

It does the trick, because I always get a great crop. But then, I dig in shit loads (literally) of manure and compost over the winter.

Either you go with the swings or the roundabouts, I guess.