Off to harvest my first potato bag...

VinceNoir

A._Badger wrote: »

One observation I would make about bags picks up on a comment Sarah Raven (I think) made, somwhere - that the business of earthing-up doesn't appear to do what it is suggested it does, when using bags. If you dig down into a bag of growing potatoes, they do not, as is often said, make more tubers as you earth them up. In fact, the tubers seem to be formed at the botom of the bag, regardless.

I have one of her books around and will see if I can find exactly what she says. It's an interesting comment because it suggests there may be a better approach to take than the one usually advocated.

This year was the firsrt I've been growing spuds. I followed teh instructions, adn it seem earthing up has not worked. On one or two plants, there were signs that some small potatoes were starting to form, but all the decent sized spuds were in the bottom 6-9 inches of the bag.

I think a better way might be to use a 3/4 full bag, then earth up just the once when the foliage is looking big and healthy. It seems to me the plant is putting too much energy into growing up than developing the tubers. I'm just guessing here though, I'll try it this way next year.

Also, my plants were decimated by somehthing, probabyl slugs, but I couldn't see any trails around the bag. They were looking very healthy and then 2 days later almost all the leaves had been munched.

D&DD

Don't get disheartened Twiglet,some years no matter what you do things just don't get going for some reason.
Try fewer seed potatoes if you try again for a bag that size I'd use 2 or 3 that'll save a bit and I sometimes use layers of grass and compost to earth up.
I grow mine in a similar fashion to Mr BE
Bob flowerdew wrote in KG that he earths up using only straw so there are cheaper ways.
My first bag Anyas was brilliant (anyas are a cross of pink fir apple and desiree) I usually have success with charlotte and nicola in bags too.I think it has a lot to do with varieties TBH.
That said I've taken a punt with a few different ones this year due to various special offers I have Rooster in lovely pink bags (urg I don't do pink...) and got some Arran Victory as well which are blue (the spuds that is not the bags )apparently they were very popular spuds during the war due to high yields so will see how they do in a bag!

Primrose

Twiglet - sorry about your potatoes. Last year I grew four sacks and none of them yielded very good crops. I suspect potatoes thrive in a heavier soil than ordinary compost, and also mine were on a hot sunny patio and although well watered, I suspect the roots and compost simply got too hot for the roots and baby potatoes to thrive. If you want to try again next year, I'd suggest digging up some of your clay soil, mixing it in a wheelbarrow with your existing potato compost, throwing in some chicken manure pellets to add sufficient nutrients. This may give a better result. The best potatoes I've ever grown were in my compost heap where I tossed out some shrivveled old supermarket potatoesand just covered them with garden waste as the compost heap grew naturally. They were left in all winter and when I dug the heap out next Spring I had lots of good sized potatoes so I'm not sure that earthing up is essential.

Don't give up on your tomatoes. Many varieties, especially if started a little late, won't start ripening until September. They do need sun and warmth and if you live in a northern area, putting some fleece over the plants at night might help bring them along.

morganlefay

I grew three bags of earlies for the first time ever this year. I put them in John Innes, not peaty soil, and i added potato fertiliser (Dobies I think). They were incredibly thirsty and on hot days I watered them three times a day, as they were on a S facing terrace and got very hot, which they are supposed to like. They grew foliage like a jungle and just when it was time to harvest them I had to start a diet, so we left them about a month too long. I am now rootling about in the bags in a rubber glove to harvest them as there are only 2 of us, but they are too big really and are a bit floury. There are very few at the top , and they all seem to be down the bottom, so I suspect what others on here have said about earthing up being a waste of time may be right. I am not sure I would grow them again because all that foliage flowing across half the terrace was a pain, and now they're so big (up to tennis ball size, some of them) they aren't as tasty as i'd hoped.
I think it's going to be lettuces, tomatoes and climbing french beans next year !

A._Badger

I would say to morganlafay that variety may be the key to her problem. If you grow a maincrop, or if you leave even an early(ish) variety like Suttons Foremost in too long, they will get very big.

Flouriness tends to go with certan varieties, though (Foremost again) I think tends to turn flourier as it gets older.

Try a known waxy early or second early like Charlotte and I think you may be pleasantly surprised. For this Christmas, I'm trying Nicola (if you see what I mean) and I was heartened to see a comment earlier that they had worked well for someone else.

Still looking for that Sarah Raven book....

A._Badger

Right, I have now found la Raven's 'The Great Vegetable Plot' and it seems I was mistaken. Or, if there is something about the issue of where in a container potato tubers form, I can't find it, despite combing through the index.

I know I have read someone recently making the comment several of us here have echoed - that the tubers only form towards the bottom of the container - which calls into question the need for so much depth and so much compost.

If I ever find the comment, I'll post it here.

Oh, and no. I bought her book from a church fete for £1. It's not worth £20.

tanith

I harvested my first potato bag today and in the top 6-8ins I got one and half pound of mixed size spuds the largest being palm size, they were delicious , I'm going to keep a tally each time I pick some so I know how much in weight I get from each bag...

tangojulie

Sorry to hear about your potatoes, it might help to know that most of the allotment message boards are full of experienced growers saying how badly their spuds have done this year. Also, it's trickier than you might think to get a good crop in bags. I've tried for 3 years and the results have never been up to much.

It does sound as it your plants were overcrowded, I would put 2 at most in a grobag sized bag. More seed potatoes doesn't mean a bigger yield, it just means more competition for the plants.

If you want to keep trying in bags then I thoroughly recommend the YouTube videos from potatospecialist, everything you might want to know about potatoes and then some. He also suggest other ways of growing them and has some comparative pictures. And he's about to start trialling growing in bags with the top two thirds full of something like shredded paper instead of compost, more evidence that they only grow in the bottom third of the bag I think.

Personally I recommend growing them on the surface covered with something - anything really - that's dark and porous. I tried a row like that this year on the advice of Garden Organic. Apparently trials show that you get almost as big a yield as growing them in the standard way. That certainly happened for me. I forked over the top few inches of soil with a hand fork, fertilised it, laid seed potatoes on it and covered them with not very well rotted home made compost. Then every time I mowed the lawn I put the clippings straight on the row. Result, dead easy to do, masses of potatoes, no digging, easy disposal of lawn mowings, and an unexpected bonus that the potatoes were all easy to find and very clean and undamaged. I'll certainly be doing that again.

morg_monster

I'm feeling a little smug now, I decided to tip out my morrison's flower bucket this evening, which was an experiment with one seed rooster potato. I wasn't expecting much as we had a late frost in mid may which damaged some of the haulms, and had read that maincrop potatoes don't do well in containers anyway, especially small ones. Anyhoo, I haven't weighed them yet as they are drying out on some newspaper on the table, but from 1 seed potato, I have 14 potatoes!!! Wow!! All are 2-3" inches across, most 3", a decent size I reckon considering the size of pot. I am well pleased, I'm amazed there was room for them in the pot!

The only thing was that they all had raised white spots on, but from what I've read this is fairly typical when you have wet soil; it certainly has been drenched over the last couple of weeks.

twiglet98

tangojulie wrote: »

. I forked over the top few inches of soil with a hand fork, fertilised it, laid seed potatoes on it and covered them with not very well rotted home made compost. Then every time I mowed the lawn I put the clippings straight on the row. Result, dead easy to do, masses of potatoes, no digging, easy disposal of lawn mowings, and an unexpected bonus that the potatoes were all easy to find and very clean and undamaged. I'll certainly be doing that again.

I think maybe this would work for me!

I've an area of garden that used to be a manure heap, now flattened and scratched over by the hens. Will have a think how to lay it out and protect it from the scratching crew, but this sounds like something I might actually manage. Thank you for all the tips, I will get to grips with growing and one day hope I'll only have to buy bananas!