Reclaiming ground for a potato patch

I began the day as usual: even before I put the kettle on, still in my dressing-gown, checking my seedlings. Lots of tomatoes have come up, and celery, and more snapdragons and peas and beans. Fantastic!

After too much fiddling about indoors, I turned the compost heap. This was really tiring and I had to do it in three stints.

Then I turned my attention to where I'd like to grow potatoes. Ideally I'd have sorted this out earlier, but there's been such a backlog of major clearing to do that this is the soonest I found I could get to it.

This is how it started off:



I put all the clobber elsewhere - chicken wire, piles of sticks, old incinerator, and plastic cold frame. I lifted some stones and bricks out and kept them handy because they were part of The Plan. I found a toad and many toadlets and took a tea break while they hid themselves again. Then I spread compost over the area I will be planting in:



I covered it with weed-proof fabric. This wasn't the right shape so I had to cut it about a bit, and then weigh it down with the bits of brick. Finally I put some old compost bags down on the areas that will be path, since I want to be able to lift the weedproof in a couple of weeks, and covered the bags with bark.



Seen from the other end:


When I think of the scale on which my father plants potatoes... - he'd cover more than half our total garden! Last year he lost the lot because he accidentally got weed-killer on them. Being pretty much organic, that's one problem I should be without.

PS the shrubs along the back are a ribes, a kerriea, an evergreen, a hibiscus which I love, and a potentilla.

PPS for anyone craving some colour at the moment, I've just seen this posting from "My Mother's Garden", especially the third picture down - I love the profusion, and the height.