Start of the 2025 Kitchen Garden Season #3

 It is 21st March and the weather has warmed sufficiently to plant out the seed potatoes and onion sets. The weather forecast indicates a low probability of frost.

Potatoes - I'm planting 'Premiere' this season as they yielded a good crop of largely disease free tubers when I last used this variety in 2023. My kilogram of seed potatoes comprised 12 tubers which were laid out in trays to chit about 3 weeks ago.

This year I decided to dig out a trench (or two) for the seed potatoes as there were only 12 tubers to plant (two short rows of six). I used a different technique last year, because there were more spuds to plant, and that also worked very well. After placing the seed potatoes approximately 30-35 cm apart in the bottom of the trench (Photo 1), I then infilled with coir compost recovered from Veg/Salad Planters (Photo 2).

Photo 1: Spade-wide Trench, Tubers 30 cm Apart

Photo 2: Trench in-filled with Recovered Coir

Finally, the soil dug out of the trench was used to earth up the potato rows (Photo 2). I usually scatter recovered coir compost around the kitchen and flower gardens but using it as an infill seems a good and practical idea.

The previous day I had planted out the onion sets (Red Baron). This variety always seems to grow and store well so was an easy choice.

Photo 3: Red Baron Onion Sets

Firstly, I turned over the soil (lightly dug, about half a spade's depth) removing weeds and breaking up any compacted soil areas. Three of my four plots are shown in Photo 4; I follow a 4-year crop rotation plan. The nearest plot is largely for brassicas, the middle plot is mainly potatoes and sweetcorn, and I will be growing onions, garlic and root vegetables in the top plot. Currently, the top plot has a crop of field beans (aka broad beans) grown as a cover/green manure crop. These were planted in October/November; I haven't decided yet whether to let them flower and collect/eat the beans. As there is still room to plant the onion sets to the left of the beans, I can procrastinate on this decision.

Photo 4: Lightly Dug Plots

Onions from sets is one of the easiest crops to grow. The lightly dug over soil was raked to provide a level and moderate tilth before pushing the onion set gently into the soil surface (about 10 cm apart) in rows (15 cm between rows) - Photo 5.

Photo 5: Onion Sets Planted and Watered

Finally, the sets were watered in using left-over nutrient solutions from a recently emptied Salad/Veg Planters (Photo 6) ...

Photo 6: Residual Nutrient Solution from Last Season's Veg/Salad Planter

March, this year, has been very dry (6.4 mm rainfall up to 26th) as shown in Figure 1 (21st March marked). With two weeks of no rain prior to planting out the onion sets, it was necessary to water them in.

Figure 1: March 2025 Rainfall (mm) up to 27th of the Month

Finally, the recently washed insect mesh was erected around the onion/bean plot to ward off cats who like to leave their calling cards on freshly dug soil. Originally, the insect barrier was to reduce carrot fly attack though I no longer grow carrots because they don't do well here.