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 Whoops!  Don't know why I couldn't write anything in the post body so here is what I wanted to ask in this follow-up post.  From your experience, when do you start planting out seed potatoes in central Italy to get good results and when would you expect to start being able to crop them?  Being new to vegetable gardening both in Italy and the UK we are a bit green about this.  Perhaps green is not the right term to use!  Advice would be greatly appreciated.  We are coming out to our house for most of February and wonder if this is too early/wet to plant them.

  Most people around here, Tuscany region, tend to plant about early March time in line with the Lunar calendar. The frost will be gone by then and people start planting lots of things around then. Not a big crop round here thought don't know why; like their carbs from other sources I expect.

I remembered a discussion we had about this topic some months ago in the Gardening Group. This may be of help

I'm not much good in the garden and leave all that to Mrs M. I would have thought that when we see things appear here in the ferramentas, or in the markets for sale (seed potatoes and sets, so the wife tells me, of onions) then surely that will be the time when they are best planted.

  Thank you all - Gromit, Gala Placida and Colonel Mustard - for your help.  As we won't be there in early March we will have to try late February and keep our fingers crossed.  They are only for our own use when we come out in the summer so it will not be a disaster whatever happens. 

  Well by that time the Porcupines will have eaten them all anyway......