Peter's Potting Shed, the retreat

Peter Sourbutts Diary
2013
.

MARCH
Hi all
Yes again the weather is still in winter mode!! but enough of that, lets look forward.
   The great thing that although its still very cold we are into 12 hrs daylight and 12 hrs dark, plants will really start to grow now. Since last time I have been potting up my cutting tubers, and boy is there a lot. I mix my compost in 10 litre batches. The potting mixture is 3 parts Levington M2, 1 part Singletons John Innes number 2, and 1 part Perlite, to which I add 50 mills of nutrimate and provado to reduce any infestation of vine weevil (the provado is mixed at 30 mills to 1 litres of water and added to the 10 litre compost mix.). My belief is that as the provado is a systemic the roots take the mixture up form day one. The cutting tubers are potted into the mixture and placed back onto the hotbed from were they came for 4-5 days so as not to shock them to much. As you can see from the photos I seem to be getting a good root system on the plants. The idea now is to keep them slightly moist without saturation this will encourage good root growth. Hopefully this week I will take down the separation in the greenhouse and start potting up my adult tubers, I am still heating the greenhouse at 10 degrees air temperature as the weather will not permit me to reduce the heating yet. Hopefully by my next dairy spring will be here.