The new garlic variant Dukát that I planted in the new raised bed started to poke out of the leaf mulch, so I scraped the mulch away so the plants have light. Also, the leaf mulch was sometimes too compacted, and the plants had trouble getting through. We shall see how this turns out. I will definitely use fungicides this year to try to protect this crop, since garlic is one of the most expensive crops that I grow, and I like it.

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The ten cloves of garlic Janko that I planted from last year also all poked out of the ground.

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That means they were at least healthy enough to not rot over winter. We shall see if they grow. I would very much like that, the variant is tasty, and it made huge cloves that are easy to peel.

Other than that, I continued to do some heavy work whenever the weather allowed it, until I was forced into a pause yesterday, when strong western winds brought with them rain, snow, and eventually frost. I did manage at least to prepare some of the potato patches. I have approximately 400 potatoes to plant, which means I need somewhere around 130 m total length of rows.  I am nowhere near that; it will be a lot of work.

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For the Ruth Stout method, I started to prepare the lawn by spreading rows of last year’s mixture of moss and soil, together with some rotten grass from the last mowing of the lawn in 2025. I will plant mostly the early potatoes Bellarosa and Camel in here, and since both of those are red tubers, I will put two rows of the yellow early variety Dali between them to keep them separated. For the Dali, I will plant the smallest tubers here. The bigger ones will go into deeper soil for better results.

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The patch between the big greenhouse and the bamboo patch is deep, sandy soil, not the natural soil around here, but one that I created over decades. It is not ideal, but it is easy to work, and I will plant the variant Agrie here, because it is an indeterminate variety which should benefit from the depth and sufficient hilling. On the south side is this year’s attempt at growing spinach. I have sown half of a 50 cm strip with spinach seeds, and the other half with pre-grown spinach plants.

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The patch in front of the entrance to the big greenhouse, where I grew butternut pumpkins and red beets last year, will also be planted with the variant Agrie.

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Most of the Dali variant will go on the elevated mound, where I tried unsuccessfully to grow peas and wintering onions last year, and successfully grew outdoor tomatoes under a shelter. I will try the tomatoes in the same patch again, after supplementing the soil with compost and fertilizer, and the potatoes will go on every available bit of soil around it.

This year, I will use commercial fertilizers on all my crops since a lot of this soil is still far from optimal. I am planting 30 kg of tubers, and unless I get at least 300 kg in return, I will be sorely disappointed.