Tansy was so frustrated at the lack of walks during the days of constant rain that I finally took her out one morning in the rain. Tansy doesn't like too much rain and I could tell she was sulking about the rain and being so wet, but she was also delirious with excitement at being out and about!
Finally the rain cleared in Canberra on Sunday afternoon so I went out to the garden to pick vegetables. I gave about 2kg (4.5lb) of split and rotting tomatoes to the chooks and picked about another 2kg for humans. Then I saw a couple of potatoes poking out of the ground and starting to go green. All the rain had compacted all the soil and mulch down so much that potatoes were starting to show. So I had a quick look for potatoes and found a couple more. I was surprised because of the 39 potatoes that I planted, while they all grew into potato plants, we've had only one set of flowers this season, so I was thinking that maybe we would have hardly any potatoes. But after finding the first couple of potatoes I decided to get the garden fork and try digging where a couple of potato plants have already died. And there was a heap of potatoes!
Canberra has heavy clay soil so with all the rain the soil was really muddy and soggy. When I dug to about 20cm below the surface the soil was just sludge and water was pooling (like when you dig at the beach).
Today I dug in another part of the garden (when you plant 39 potatoes they end up all over the garden!!) where I saw a couple more potatoes poking out of the ground. All of these potatoes are just from the top 5cm of soil, some are so big!
We are now very excited about our potential potato harvest and can hardly wait to start digging in a few weeks when all the plants have died back.
Update: We ended up harvesting nearly 40kg (88lb) of potatoes!
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