Potato Planting On A West Cork Smallholding.

It was often the custom to plant the 'praeties' (spudatoes) on St Patricks Day or Good Friday.  Today is a bank holiday in Ireland.  Yet Good Friday is not.  I have never understood why Good Friday is not a public holiday.    Today I turned on the telly and they say Yorkshire is getting snow.  We''ll just have to cover up the stalks with old newspapers (we only buy one a week for the telly guide) and straw, if we get any frost.

Any road.  That's what we did.  We got out my trusty Azada (you have got to get one) and hacked out some trenches for our Orla potatoes.   Then I dug out the remaining fym/soil mix and we planted the potatoes fifteen inches apart.  I always use my loppers to cut some Buddliea cuttings to mark the rows.   These will also root and you have got some new shrubs.

Here's some photographs of us busy 'potatoing' yesterday morning.  Bantry Bay is in the background.  It's one of the deepest natural bays in the world.  I have told that it is sixty fathoms deep in places.  To those of you who didn't do metalwork at school.  A fathom is 6 feet deep.

Here's some photographs for you:

Me watching number 2 son dig with the long handle shovel.

Me with my trusty Azada.  Bantry Bay is in the background.

Potatoes ready to be covered up.

Potatoes covered up.  Leeks are watching from a 'raised bed'  made from the sides of an old old wardrobe.   The corrugated sheets is another compost area.  You can't have enough of them can you?