5 – Planting Potatoes

Although I hadn’t planned to plant anything this year I decided to plant some potatoes. Weve managed to weed the patch at the very top of the allotment and I have a few old potatoes at home which are now no good for cooking. Also I have some new toys I want to play with.

It was Amazon Prime day recently and I found a battery powered Rotavator and Strimmer on sale by Einhell, details below.

Check Price – Einhell GC-CT 18/24 Trimmer

Check Price – Einhell GE-CR 30 Tiller

I gave the Trimmer a quick test and it cut through the weeds like a hot knife through butter. Im not planning to use it today much as I will come back a different day and trim everything before apply weed killer to the rest of the allotment. No today is Potatoe planting but before I can plant any I need to prepare the soil.

We weeded the top of the allotment and put ground sheets down weeks ago now, pulling the liner up we have bare soil. All the weeds we had missed have died and most roots which we left behind look to have sprouted and died soon after.

The soil is loose for about an inch but the trees along the edge of the allotment have formed a think web of tiny roots just below the surface. I tried once digging down into the soil by hand which was nearly impossible. But this is where the tiller comes in.

The tiller has no issue cutting through the web of roots, slowly cutting its way deeper and deeper into the soil. after about twenty minutes I have managed to go over the entire plot several times getting a good 6 or 7 inches deep.

After evenly smoothing out the plot I create a few rows of soil for the potatoes and then burry them. I give them a quick water using a water can I picked up cheap and will now leave them until they are ready to harvest.

The potatoes should do well on their own, my only concern is its a dry patch and they will be competing with the nearby trees for water. Any way they would have just been binned otherwise and it gave me an excuse to test my new rotavator.

I plan to turn most of the allotment into soil with a path up the middle, the rotavator with be used before planting early in the year to turn over all the soil (about 100m2) so it will make that job a lot easier and quicker than by hand.