More Green Manure

Just a short, and fairly mundane note: I dug over the space where the second-cropping potatoes had been (until earlier this week), and the last few meters of where the main-crop potatoes where, and have sown both with the last of the green manure seed.

The second-croppers came out, because they were starting to look sad, many of the Vivaldi had flowered, and most of the Orla had failed to come up. On digging over, it transpires that the Orla had decided to grow two new tubers (at the inevitable expense of the seed tuber disappearing), without the benefit of foliage. From all forty seeds, we probably only lifted about 2kg of tubers. Not exactly a success: we almost certainly won't trouble ourselves with second-croppers again. However, the Vivaldi showed no sign of scab, so they might be a contender for first-earlies next year, depending on taste.

Only nine of the Frostie spring cabbages we sowed about a month ago are doing well, so I've also sown ten more. The turnips from the same date have been badly attacked by mice and slugs, which is disappointing; it's now too late to sow more.

The elephant garlic and over-wintering onions have arrived, so we'll plant them at the weekend: we're still waiting for the 'normal' garlic.