One potato, two potato... ten seed potatoes!

Seed potatoes

This is the year of the potato. At least, it could well be in my garden.

I've been given ten seed potatoes and some simple instructions as to how to plant them. So on the Easter weekend, in late April, I cleared a patch of soil and buried my gifts.

But the process of growing my own potatoes didn't start there. Three weeks earlier I laid out the seed potatoes on a sunny, south-facing windowsill, to encourage them to begin growing. Which they duly did, producing weirdly blobs and knobs of what were, I assume, the beginnings of a root system.

Planting the potatoes was quite straightforward. I dug two short trenches, about 15cm deep, and laid the potatoes into them with the newly-emerging roots facing downwards. I left a gap of around 15cm between each potato and around 25cm between the two trenches.

Then I covered over the seeds with soil and left them to it. I'm assured that with minimal further intervention I'll be harvesting my first potatoes in late summer or early autumn. That's something to look forward to, I think.

Victoria plum finally bursts into blossom

Victoria plum blossom

Three years ago, in March 2011, I bought a Victoria plum tree from B&Q, for £9.98. It was a minor celebration of having my own garden on the sunny south coast.

Within weeks of being planted a single blossom appeared. From that lonely flower came the single, swelling pod of green which became a plum. It ripened and finally I picked it and ate it, savouring each mouthful. My Victoria plum tree has a 100% success rate - every flower had converted into fruit.

For the next two years the tree maintained that 100% success rate. Unfortunately, this achievement came as a result of producing no new blossom in either the spring of 2013 or 2013. The solitary plum from 2011 was the only fruit it had produced and I started to consider replacing the tree.

But this year, 2014, the tree has decided to burst into life. March brought a flush of white flowers, along with nervous anticipation - would any be pollinated? It may have been a mild winter, but there did not seem a lot of insect activity while the flowers were on display.

It's taken three years for the plum tree to come into flower. Will this autumn bring a plum harvest?