Kitchen Garden Forum

Belated New Year,s Resolutions.

Do not buy seed potatoes on line.
Do not buy Potato sacks online. My late Mum had thicker lace curtains.
Do not buy Onion Sacks online. The weft & warp part with hardly any weight in them.
Don't the buyers ever check them out.
Do you know, I feel a lot better now.

Blooming freezing wind gusts down here today, so I did the respectable thing & hunkered down at home. The wind has died down now so will try lottie again tomorrow. Did rug up for a wee walk and accidentally found myself at Inexcess so felt obliged to buy a few gardening bits! Come on you know you would have done it too - seeds 25p at pack - all 2017 / 2018 use by date!

Nasty cold strong wind but nice sunshine. Have managed a little gardening having finished the bathroom on Saturday. Laid out soil, leafmould and sand to dry in the greenhouse for mixing composts. Potted up some hardy annuals for cut flowers that I have been growing over Winter in the shed. Solar panels said it was the sunniest day since 23rd October, 19°in the tunnel.

Shallot Man wrote:.....
Do not buy Potato sacks online. My late Mum had thicker lace curtains......

Unless they are the excellent paper ones available through various stockists.

Viciously cold and strong wind today albeit with sunshine in the afternoon. Hope it will abate a bit tomorrow because our 'wild garden' (mainly grasses and herbaceous plants, a bit like low-class Piet Oudolf!) is in dire need of tidying up but if the wind continues, anything cut and raked up will simply blow away.

And, Shallot Man, I do sympathise with you. I have been so often disappointed with things ordered on line, and not just gardening stuff, that I have vowed to avoid it at all possible and go and SEE and FEEL anything I want to buy.

I was surprised that anyone on here uses potato sacks, presumably for growing potatoes, and I really don't mean to be rude or judgemental. Is it really a useful method ? In my case carting soil about might negate any benefit.

I have some coffee sacks I got free from a supplier though when I buy coffee I buy between six and ten kilos of green beans so the supplier is more likely to be helpful. The sacks are are very thick and I assume very strong though I have never used them yet.

Richard
Maybe people are thinking:-

Potato sacks (as in hessian type) for storing (which I think was what Shallot Man had in mind)
Potato bags as in strong man made material for growing

That's Just a maybe.

in the case of the latter perhaps not everyone has the ground space you do. In fact my father in law no longer has space so he just fills a couple of old compost bags and grows four or five potatoes on his patio, just so he can have the enjoyment, taste and satisfaction of a few fresh grown spuds. Probably only gets a few but the days of him having a huge back garden are long gone.

Ricard with an H wrote:I was surprised that anyone on here uses potato sacks, presumably for growing potatoes, and I really don't mean to be rude or judgemental. Is it really a useful method ? In my case carting soil about might negate any benefit.

I didn't mean to sound boastful about space it was just that it seems such hard work conveying soil or expensive buying compost for a few spuds. I tried this method with tyres, when we first moved into the barn and then bought the adjacent small field that became our paddock I found easily one hundred old tyres in the long grass. Farmers and old tyres Eh ?

I was amazed when a neighbouring farmer collected them and carted them away, they hold down the silage covers.

Warmer and drier today, so turned over a compost heap ready for going under the spuds and brassicas and chopped a few logs and filled the wee log store before it starts snowing or raining again.

Brilliant morning so went down to lottie, but the drizzle moved in about midday, so called it quits but got 1/2 the shed cleared & cleaned & all the onion & garlic beds weeded, dog protected & wood ash scattered. Looking good & some nice surprises.
Particularly pleased with that perfect little cauliflower, but the January King is looking pretty good too, even if not so perfect!

Dinner at yours then Westi, I've just cleared the last of the Curly Kale, so the garden is now bare.

Cracking looking cauli, nice colour for time of year.

Lovely Westi, I haven't been able to grow cauli, cabbages or sprouting broccoli and they take up to much space for my beds. Plenty of other stuff I can grow.

I didn't realize that parsley grows through winter, I have masses of parsley that is vibrant.

Shallot Man wrote:Belated New Year,s Resolutions.

Do not buy seed potatoes on line.
Do not buy Potato sacks online. My late Mum had thicker lace curtains.
Do not buy Onion Sacks online. The weft & warp part with hardly any weight in them.
Don't the buyers ever check them out.
Do you know, I feel a lot better now.

Sorry, should have made myself clearer. Was referring to crop storage bags. [ I put it down to senile decay ]

Down on the plot today when we heard very loud engine noise the next thing two Lockheed c_130a Hercules planes came over wing tips virtually touching around 300 feet high ,ten minutes later they came again ,we don't have any RAF bases near us not that we know off burtonwood used to be an American base but now closed or so we have been told ,very noisy is an understatement