It turns out that you can’t stop potatoes. They know what time it is and keeping them in their box because you’re not ready to deal with them does nothing to stop them sprouting. Trouble is of course, they’re sprouting long leggy bits in the dark, rather than strong stubby sprouts. Anyway, now they’re out of the cupboard and on their tray, I’ve broken off the weediest sprouts so they can concentrate on growing from the other eyes instead.

Those Pentland Javelins are now also joined on the chitting tray by a bag of Casablanca First Earlies. The scale of the allotment is so different from my previous patch at the end of the garden. Where once a few sprouting spuds from the potato bag would have been plenty to stick in the ground, now I need two bags of seed potatoes to fill the two allotted potato beds at Plot 5B.