Tidying up asparagus bed, frozen potatoes

It’s the first sunny day here for a while (we’ve had a run of cloudy, damp, cold days), so I headed out to the vegetable garden to cut back the asparagus ferns.  I still have the other half of the bed and the artichoke patch to cut back before manuring and mulching can happen.

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Asparagus bed before cutting back
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Asparagus bed with one end cut back

 

While wandering around I noted how much pea straw has been scratched on to the paths by the birds – mainly blackbirds, I think.  As it’s been so cold lately, the potato tops have all died back.  This, together with the scratching birds, means that many potatoes are lying exposed on the surface of the garden bed – these were frozen by the frost we had last night.  I scratched around and rescued as many from the surface and close to the surface as I could and came up with 12l of them!  There are many more further down that will be fine there for digging later in the season and also as seed for next year’s crop.

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Potatoes exposed by birds and frost
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12l of rescued potatoes