Potatoes and Pots

As I mentioned Tuesday was a none gardening day as I have to teach in the evening, but yesterday was a lovely sunny evening after work, so after walking the dog I was in the garden.

I have a local source for some more wood as you can see above, I knocked on the peoples door and of course they are quite happy for me to take what I want.

So yesterday I wanted to get the potatoes in. I was quite worried because I didn't really know what to plant them in. so I had a bit of a root around the garden and I found these.

A whole bunch of bags of different types of compost. There was what was left of the multipurpose compost, a bag of ericaceous compost, some African violet compost, some John Innes compost and the tub is an unused tub of chicken fertiliser pellets - honestly I can't even remember buying them. So I just stuck them in a black bin and gave them a lovely mix up (not the chicken pellets). reading the bags they all seemed to be peat anyway (I know I know don't use peat based compost - but they were already there so I might as well use them)

Anyway after poking holes in the bottom of these brown recycling bags I found under the bramble I used a load of polystyrene crocks that I picked up via freecycle. Bunged in about 4 inches of my compost mix, then about five chitted tubers and then another 6 inches of soil. As per whatever website it was I was reading. Then a good hand full of chicken manure on top - as you can see in the picture and then watered them all in. - Lets wait and see hey?

My main problem then was that I had basically used all of the compost that I had mixed up, so what am I going to use for all my other pots, seeds and plantings apart from those that go directly into the garden.

And yes I had another bright idea. I had loads of pots that were growing not much else but a few spindly bulbs and weeds. All of the pots were planted up using multi compost bought at great expense from various DIY places so I thought I would empty them out.

I haven't yet emptied all of them but this is the results so far.

A large pile of compost which I have sieved through by hand and removed all the roots, bulbs and nasty stuff. An interesting point is that the earth in there felt really warm as I was sieving it.

The empty pots will be used for bush tomatoes and other fabulous stuff I'm sure.