Our home grown strawberries are looking and tasting good and the potatoes are starting to flower

Strawberries  .

Picking strawberries, today was a good day for strawberries enough were ready to pick and enjoy as a tasty snack later. Now is a good time to add a reminder that it is important to wash the fruits you pick (in the garden/or on the allotment) before eating them.

I also noticed the gooseberries are starting to plump up in size and that the red gooseberries are starting to 'colour up'. Wow this is when it starts to get exciting and really interesting, not knowing how much progress is being made between visits to the plot .



First Early Potatoes, how to check if they are ready to eat. 

A simple way to find out if the first early potatoes are ready.

I am holding back from checking on the first early potatoes that are flowering *.

Later on (maybe next week) , I will check on the size of the new potatoes that are forming on the first earlies that are flowering.

A way to check if your potatoes are ready.
I will check on the new potatoes progress not by digging them up but by gently unearthing a few potatoes near the surface. If they are not big enough to eat I will gently replace the soil over them. If you do this new potato checking process with care the plant is not damaged and the new baby potatoes remain attached to the 'mother potato' so they can carry on growing. If you are lucky enough to find new potatoes big enough to eat, gently remove a few for today's meal and leave the rest to grow on. You can harvest/crop a few potatoes as and when you need them from the first earlies in this way for a few days or weeks until you want to harvest more of them.

*I am giving the potatoes  a bit more time because the weather has been so dry here; I think it may have delayed the new baby potatoes from making progress in the week when I was away and unable to water them.