First potatoes
Well, the last day of August saw Holger lift his first crop of ‘Cae Non potatoes’! With the distinct lack of good top soil anywhere in the field they were actually planted back in March in old car tyres in soil that needed to be ferried in bag by bag from our garden at home. Being rather thirsty plants, Cae Non with its abundance of water close to the surface promised to be the ideal place for them and they did indeed start off very well but with experiencing the wettest summer for a hundred years I became somewhat apprehensive that they might not do half as well below the surface as they did above. When after a faint attempt at flowering the leaves died off in the middle of August I didn’t think there was much chance of a harvest at all but emptying the tyres eventually yielded 32 lb of ‘Druid’ potatoes in their beautiful looking reddish skin – not bad after all for a first crop! Now I need to separate them into the smaller ones to keep for next year’s seed potatoes and the bigger ones for our tummies. And of course, I then remembered that for once I actually planted them on time and not, like in previous years at home, as late as May and with 20 weeks assumed time from planting to harvest they where spot on time with no need to worry.
After this encouraging result I now very much want to increase production next year and have already got an idea how i might be able to raise productivity within the individual tyres so stay tuned!