Easter weekend is a great time of year to really clean up the garden.  I was able to finally finish putting all of the new soil on my one flower bed, and move the sod that was just lying around in the bed.  Phew! That was hard work!  We had company coming for Easter, so I spent a lot of the weekend baking, and cleaning, and well, not being in the garden.  My husband was a real trooper and did a great deal of gardening work for me!

There was a real focus on potatoes at our house!  I can give an update on our first planting of early potatoes: the organic Colleens are just starting to sprout up!  Yay!  As for the second bed, my husband decided he wanted to dig a deeper trench for our maincrop “Sarpo Mira” organic seed potatoes.  He dug about six inches, as we were concerned that the cardboard wouldn’t be rotted through enough for the roots to grow down.  Now the roots can grow, and hopefully the cardboard will prevent grass from growing around the rest of the bed.  He also planted them a little differently than the earlies.  After he placed the potatoes in the trench, he added compost on top before covering them with soil.   We did some further reading and decided this would be a great way to feed the seed potatoes.

I’ll just add a quick word about how great it is to be able to use your own compost, and it really is easy to make!  See my link to my previous post on composting: https://mominthegarden.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/valentines-day-love-your-family-and-your-compost/

The maincrop potatoes are planted a little further apart than the earlies.  If you place them too close, you’ll just get smaller spuds.  We spaced  them about a foot apart, and the rows were about 1 & 1/2 feet apart.  This is our first year growing spuds, so fingers crossed that everything goes well!

It was a great weekend for gardening, and for getting together with family!

I hope you had a productive gardening weekend, too!

Dana

My husband, working hard (captured by my son who found photography more fun than digging!).

You can tell I’m a fan of no energy laundry drying – the laundry drying rack always seems to be in the background of my pictures!

Chitted (sprouted) Sarpo Mira Organic Maincrop seed potatoes.

Two potato beds with black “carpeting” between them to keep grass down.

A bloom from our “early” Colleen organic potatoes.

Here’s a small before and after look at the flower garden that I’ve been covering with new top soil.  The views are from each end.  The big lumps in the right hand picture are overturned sod. I moved them for another wee gardening project I have in mind!