Setting a mad March pace

The passing of a couple of days means that with the arrival of March it is now time to finish digging and start sowing seeds and considering potatoes.

As I live in the south we are lucky enough to have relatively mild weather but still it doesn't do to be too confident. Last year we had frosts as late as mid May. I will carry on regardless full of hope for an early spring.

After a tempting spring morning, last weekend brought more rain and a drop in temperature. This means the soil is too claggy and wet to dig. Trying to turn wet earth makes it not only heavy, back threatening work but also that the soil structure is damaged and it encourages compaction which eliminates nutrients, water and air that plant roots need.

Despite not having finished last year's harvest of potatoes, I have already been sucked into planning for this coming year. Aldi had a special offer on vegetable plants and seeds and I fell for it. Now they are languishing in my kitchen waiting for me to plant them out. I also have last year's potatoes sprouting like mad.

I bought two variety of seed potato - pentland javelin that is supposed to be a good early variety that has a firm, waxy texture that is ideal for salads and Maris piper that is a good floury all rounder that is great for chips, roasts and mash. I'm tempted by a bag of charlotte's, another salad variety and would also love to try an unusual variety like anya or pink fir which are both long in shape and strangely enough pink fit is actually pink (wonder if it loses the colour on cooking like the blue potato does). However I suspect I have already run out if space. I still need to dig over the area I have allocated for the potatoes (clearly - as the picture shows!).

I am planning on following the advice on rotation and will be moving the potato area to where the tomatoes  and squashes last grew. While neither tomatoes nor squash fall into the standard rotation groups and I am reducing the amount of brassicas I'm growing it still makes sense to rotate plants to reduce the build up of diseases and depletion of nutrients.
Also Aldi had asparagus crowns and I intend to devote half of one of the raised beds to them as they are a permanent crop that deserve being well treated. I did also have some last year but I fear they got trampled in the brassica harvesting.