This week was the big maincrop potato harvest. Pleased to report that they don't seem to have been affected by the blight above ground.
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| The haul of Romano and Setanta potatoes |
What a workout that was and I wasn't even doing the digging! The fish boxes came in handy once again. Jim had said in the morning 'Surely this isn't going to take us all day', but of course it did by the time all the taters were stowed in the summerhouse. At last a use for our ramshackle summerhouse - potato store (and probably squash store soon).
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| Drying in the summerhouse before winter storage |
The blemished and skewered potatoes were immediately processed into chips for dinner and several future dinners. Now we will leave the potatoes to dry under some newspaper for a few weeks before storing them in plastic bins in the ground (still to be dug in).
We've been having very windy and cool weather in the wake of Bertha so not much of a chance to do much outside. Three sunflowers are down, including the one in my photo. At least they make nice cut flowers.
Now hoping to use the break in the weather tomorrow to sow the overwintering onions to make sure we have enough next year. Our maincrop onions planted this spring are going to run out in a few days - not good planning there.
I'm new to this. How does overwintering onions work? Are you planting seeds or onion sets to do that?
ReplyDeleteI'm probably not the best person to advise you on this since I'm doing it for the first time, too, but I've read that you should sow onion seeds in mid-August so that they are at the right stage for overwintering. Then you get an early crop next year. Not all onion varieties are suitable - I've ordered a couple of the ones under 'overwintering onions' on vegetableseeds.net. You can also use sets, but I don't know when the best time to plant them is. This is quite an interesting article about overwintering veg: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/3350629/Top-10-vegetables-to-grow-over-winter.html I think I will try broad beans and peas over winter as well and salad leaves.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm going to need to get a move on if I want to try that this year. I'm still digging over our "from scratch" plot. If it doesn't work for this year, at least I know it's possible to try next year.
ReplyDeleteYou can't rush the digging! Hopefully you'll be in time for the garlic planting in October or November.
ReplyDeleteOh, we'll definitely be ready for garlic planting. My husband would never forgive me if we missed the deadline for garlic! I reckon I've done somewhere between 20 and 25% of the digging now and that's in less than a week, so bit by bit is definitely getting there.
ReplyDeleteSo many potatoes, that is a great harvest!
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