We had our first tee-shirt day of the year at the community allotment today! And we put the sunny day to good use - Planting the potato patch!

The plot in front of the polytunnel had been prepared in autumn and Sam did some last minute weeding before we started.

Then Luke and Shane got stuck into digging the measured trenches.

We had chosen two main crop potato varieties:

Cara are a great all round main crop potato and Sarpo Mira (which we haven't grown before) are supposed to be very blight resistant.

We laid the potatoes in the trenches, 5 to each trench.

And then we used our own compost to cover them.

Then we watered in the trenches and marked the varieties. We will use the lifted soil to mound over the green growth to protect the fresh young growth from cold weather. This mounding technique also builds more root space for the potatoes to spread into which means more spuds!

Great team work from the whole group today. Fingers crossed for more sunny spring days to come!