Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Today we planted our early and main crop potatoes. You may remember we have had the seed potatoes chitting for several weeks (see entry on 8th January). The 'earlies' (often known as new potatoes) had some nice strong green shoots sprouting (first photo) and were more than ready to be put into the ground. As we have a polytunnel we feel we can put both the earlies and the main crop in at the same time. We had prepared the beds with new manure in late December and are planting these seed potatoes (known as tubers) in a bed where courgettes and butternut squash grew last year.
The middle photo is of plants from last year's potato bed and shows how even the smallest of potatoes left in the ground from last autumn will shoot and grow. We are however pulling these up. This is because it is not really sensible to grow the same crop in the same place year after year as disease and pests may build up.
A trench 10 centimetres deep is perfect to plant the tubers into and we space them out just over an adult Wellington boot length. These measurements are not critical but do give room for 'earthing up'. 'Earthing up' means covering the growing shoots with soil to encourage more tubers to grow, it also keeps the light out and so prevents the tubers turning green and becoming poisonous. We look forward to lifting our first new potatoes in early June...