So again we bought a kilo' of 'Sebago' seedies (that gave us 11) and a kilo' of 'Red Pontiac's' (16 to be exact), same routine as before dolomite & gypsum down and watered in a bit, then the seed potato's on top.

Covered the spuds with some of a Potting Mix we bought this one looks and smells more like humus than any other brand, my bet is they make it out of that recycled stuff from the refuse tip?!

Then spread the remaining mix around the patch & watered and covered with some sugar cane mulch (from the plastic wrapped bale), found using this stuff out of the bags gets very hot once it is wet.

We will keep building up around the plants with the sugar cane mulch from the rough bales, as they grow until they are about 18"s high that should protect the growing tubers from going green.

More pictures as the patch develops, so keep checking back every few weeks.

Now to 2007's crop of garlic in a tray (9"s high x 22"s long x 15"s wide), got a dozen cloves in so far planted after the winter Equinox:

Already one has sprouted, we used a mix of that humusy potting mix and mushroom compost covered with bagged sugar cane mulch.

This is the new planting - have not been able to get another one of those styrene trays with holes in it, but had one of those large styrene esky/cooler type trays they use for Broccolli, so pushed some holes into the bottom and used it. The tray is 300mm high x 550mm long x 390mm wide.
Same as before i used that humusy type potting mix added a bit of slow release with trace elements for good measure, this time stuck the best of the last of the corms in then covered with plastic bagged sugar cane mulch i will add more as they grow. Sorry not sure how many I planted (around 15 or 18?) not feeling the best today so forgot to count but will let you know as they grow.

So far 10 of the first plantings have shown themselves.

Update on the Spuds and Garlic 26/04/2007:

The first tray of garlic has 10 out of 12 corms [planted growing and very healthily

The second tray has 14 from 15 up the other may come yet?

The Spuds are doing well so far 7 have peeped out of the covering.

Update on Spuds 16/05/2007

23 out of a possible 27 sprouted (total weight 1 kg), but that's the risk you take planting seed potatoes that haven't sprouted yet (so far here in the suburbs, that is the only way we can get them)
Would like them around mid January to mid February so we can sprout them before planting, that way you know every one is a goer, and they grow faster after planting if the sprouts are 4"s or more long.

We have just done the second top up with sugar cane mulch the plants are around 20"s high, and may not need a lot more mulch time will tell?

Ok as at 13/08/2007 the final update of our potato patch:

On the 18th; 19th & 20th of July, we experienced 3 frost mornings, the 2 days (18th & 20th) where White Frosts of very noticable proportions estimate ground temp' -4c. Now everything in the garden would have coped with those 2 days, but it was the Black Frost on the morning of the 19th that did all the damage, it killed off all the mature potato plants in our first planting.
So toady we harvested what ever we where going to get and to our surprise it was better than anticipated, 3.5Kg of Pontiac's out of 500grams of seed spuds they returned the best so the message might be plant more Pontics?
The Sebago potato's returned 2.5Kg out of 500grams of seed spuds, so all in all for the outlay of $2.50AUD we got a good return, again around the 5:1 ratio, we can only imagine what might have been had the frost not come?

We did do a second planting of some spuds out of the fridge that had sprouted in early June, these are growing slowly and survived the frost

See pictures below

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