Sticky potatoes

Every year my husband's parents slave away planting sticky potatoes (kind of like very long taro...). With my father in law to check into the hospital for about a month tomorrow there has been a rush this year to get them all planted in time. Of course rain also stops proceedings too, but it looks like they may just get them done in time.

Although they have simplified the process quite a lot since last year it is still very time consuming and back breaking work. First they put long tubes into the ground and pile lots and lots of soil on top of them - making sure to first mark where the ends of them are! Next last year's potatoes are cut and treated with something grey to prevent the ends from rotting then planted so that as they grow they will grow into the tubes - making them easy to dig up in the winter. The roots then go over the sides of the tubes and get nutrients for the potatoes. Well that is the theory anyway!
This year they have planted them just in front of our house so hopefully I will be able to give you a better photo gallery of them than I have managed in the past. That is of course if you are interested of course!
Apart from that I am trying to catch up on seed planting, but made a vital mistake yesterday when I mixed some great organic fertiliser into my garden... only problem was that it had whole kernels of corn in it which the crows love! The afternoon was spent putting up nets to try and give the seeds a chance to at least germinate... perhaps I should have put the latest edition to our family into that garden to scare the crows. Go Perky the pukeko!