You mound them in stages don’t worry. What variety are they?
1 Like
Agatha
I don’t get where to get all the extra soil from 
Bags of soil?
Grass clippings?
2 Likes
Full of seeds and weeds at the moment! So you also think I need to go higher? I can dump some bagged stuff I guess and see if I can buy some straw from a farmer. Didn’t realise potatoes were so stressful
Ok second earlies, the more you can bulk or put on top of them the better to increase potential yield. I grow most of my Agatha in towers. Just let the leaves develop b4 ré bulking
1 Like
Thanks for that, I keep reading UK gardening things about earlies ect but they don’t seem to do that here so didn’t know what they were!
OK so unanimous is that I haven’t done enough. Damn, between weeding / loosening / mounding it took me 2 hours 
and now have to start again. Bloody potatoes!
Don’t worry too much, @toryroo We don’t mound them at all since we plant through landscaping fabric. However, we plant them at the bottom of a foot-deep hole to start with, and I know you don’t have the soil depth to do that.
Mound up as much as you can by scraping up surrounding soil and grab more from elsewhere if you want to. You’ll get a yield whatever you do - it just won’t be huge! Sometimes we get a few and sometimes we get a lot - depends what mood the weather is in too.
Do you have a compost heap you can use?
2 Likes
As do we, I double dig and plant deep as with having the farm/animals/cutting grass and renovations on the go we don’t have the time, we had a bumper harvest last year that lasted us through the winter and any rows we have left we leave them to sprout again, which has been successful the last couple of years.
We are moving to more raised beds next year as my wife who deals with the veg garden has chronic
fatigue & fibromyalgia so struggles with being on her knees gardening.
Stop stressing about the vegetables Tory, gardening is meant to be fun not a stressful chore 
5 Likes
Doesn’t matter, unlessyou are aiming to win beautiful potager of the year competition. It rots quickly.
My favourite gardener of all time (now dead) was a man called Christopher Lloyd. His philosophy was to do things when you remember or have time, and use whatever you have to hand. And nature will sort it out.
4 Likes
OK so I stupidly got cross with it, decided it was a weed, ignored your and @AngelaR 's advice and decided it was a weed and pulled it up. Luckily roots all in tact as when we did it a tiny tag fell out and it is a Helenium Sahin 
I totally forget I bought it at the autumn festival last year replanted and a week or so on looking fine!!!
5 Likes
Well we were all wrong then, and not even close 
2 Likes
If you have any lawnclippings you can use them to cover the potatoes. Less backbreaking than earthing them up. As the grass clippings rot down they release nitrogen… so clean well fed spuds and not much digging.
Trick from grandpa.
1 Like
Awesome! So pretty!
We’ve all been crook for over a week and the garden is suffering. I did catch color from the corner if my eye driving in yesterday after work. Hoping it is the wild orchids, will go and loo tomorrow and update.
1 Like
Sorry you’ve been under the weather @toryroo but glad you’ve identified your plant!
We’ve had wild orchids carpetting the roadsides for some weeks now but they aren’t as spectacular as @vero 's or presumably yours… In fact our American neighbours couldn’t believe they were orchids as they didn’t look like Vero’s photo 
I’ve got lots of the bog standard but lovely pink ones, lizards and some purple spotted ones and white ones as well, the most spectacular are the bee orchids.
2 Likes
This is the lawn in front of our cottage/gite. We’ve got bee orchids (some purple, some white), pyramid orchids and lizard orchids. The last two are taller and the bee orchids tend to get lost in the long grass
Lizard orchid - they tend to be thugs!
One of the many bee orchids, which are coy and you really have to look for.
And some of the pyramid orchids, which really make their presence felt. 
3 Likes
Jealous! We were so excited to have two pyramidal ones arrive chez nous a few years bavk.
1 Like
Our cat used to do that. I guess he was proud of his work because one morning we found a dead mole upstairs. The poor thing was like a little furry cushion.