On my mind...potatoes

A little while back I bought some seed potatoes from Bunnings and waited patiently for them to sprout. Finally they did sprout, so it was planting time.

The garden bed that I planned to use was very overgrown with weeds so over a few weeks I had worked steadily at getting rid of the weeds, and built up some muscles using a maddock to break up the soil which because of the still high clay content had compacted after our long wet summer. Then I had some help from DH to empty the compost bin into the garden as well as spread some manure and bought compost as this bed needed lots of 'building up'. Blood and bone and gypsum also were worked into the soil...and then finally after another fortnight I could plant. The instructions with the potatoes said to plant them to a depth of 10 cm, 25cm apart in rows 80cm apart. I've never used the 'seed potatoes' before, but have planted sprouting potatoes from the cupboard. Gardening magazines and shows here in Australia always advocate using the certified disease free seed potatoes so I thought I'd give it a go.
Ten cm is pretty deep and I was starting to worry that my plants were not growing, but just after a fortnight, the first leaves poked through. It won't be long before I will have to start mounding up soil around the plants...all very exciting!

The first potato plant to peep through!  The leaves are still falling from the trees in my back yard!

This cherry tomato is growing out from under one of my compost bins; makes it harder to get out the compost!