OUTDOORS 12

Here you go - it is now late January and not much can be done in the actual outside due to wet weather followed by icy cold weather, but indoors I can prepare sweet potato slips ready for the outside. This will be the first year I have grown sweet potatoes at the allotment - and the only time prior I have grown them at all was in Auastralia, where you just throw one in the ground and wait rather than make slips which appears necessary in the colder climate of England. So this will be on my kitchen windowsill for the next few weeks - only recently cleared of drying nasturtium seeds and ripening tomatoes.

Well, as I currently write up the next piece of this blog post it has now reached the first weekend in February and it is time to chit my spuds for the 2017 growing year. This is the 'Swift' variety that I bought a 10-pack of from Wyevale - 9 of which fit into one empty mushroom container.

The tenth, along with various saved spuds from 'King Edward' and 'Casablanca' crops last year - and 2-3 organic purchases of late 2016 - fit a second tub. Hopefully all will be well chitted and ready to plant by the close of the month - by which time I hope to also have dug over the former fruit patch and manured it up ready to plant them!

Alas, we had 2 weeks of rain followed by a week of icy frost, followed by a week of rain - AKA 'cannot dig' season. Alas also, my sweet potato has sat 'slipping' in the kitchen windowsill for around 2 weeks - without result. Not a single shoot or root has emerged and the 2 halves have shrivelled up slightly and begun to turn moldy... I wiped the white stuff off and gave them a further week - but nothing happened, so I planted them in a tub in the poly tunnel and if they grow they grow, and if not I willl simply ONLY have garden center purchased slips to plant in 2017, unless my second and last attempt - started the final week of February - suceeds.