Potatoes: Buying, Chitting, Planting, Earthing Up; Harvesting.

beckifitzg

Yea we finally had a nice bit of rain in hemel last night! I was hoping it would carry on through the day to give the ground a complete soaking as i am not expecting it to last long but in Harpenden (where i work) it's just been cloudy with no more rain.

I'm already excited to go home and see if my potatoes have grown since yesterday

sparrer

I'll be running around your towns with buckets tonight!

[Deleted User]

we had enough rain to just tickle the surface and in fact the small drops on the patio didn`t even touch. The potential is for a real full-on drought here.

My first earlies are lady christi and I have calculated that I can start looking for thm from 21st may, but I`ll wait a couple more weeks because of the weather.

morg_monster

kittie I am going to tip out a bag of lady christls tonight or this weekend, planted 19th March, I'll let you know what they're like. We've had hardly any rain at all, I've been giving them a good soak when the top soil is dry up to my 2nd knuckle, but on the other hand there's been no cold weather to set them back.
I do have 3 lady christls that just have hardly grown - really bizarre - some of the haulms are dying off but the middle ones are still strong and green, just not growing very fast. One seed potato from each of the 3 lots I've planted has done this; where their "colleagues" are fully earthed up and have 2-3 ft of foliage, these are only half earthed up and just have maybe 6" of foliage above the soil.

funkymonkey849

I would like some potato advice advice please!

I got a thompson and morgan potato set with my clubcard vouchers, 3 bags and 3 sets of new seed potatoes

I chucked them in about 2 months ago and they are growing well but I guess it'll be another month until they're ready

I was a bit preoccupied at the time so didn't think of staggering the sowings. Will they all be ready at once?! And will they keep in the soil for a bit so I haven't got to eat them all at once?

Also I lost the labels lol so I dunno which ones are in which bags! Some are earlies and some are second earlies. Any way to tell? What's the difference?

Should I just have a feel around and pick them when they feel ready? Not really sure what to do now and feeling a bit silly!

morg_monster

the technical term for feeling potatoes is a furtle ;-) and yes it's the best way to know if they are ready or not.

If you know which type of potatoes you started off with, they may be recognisable by the leaf shape/shade - eg I can tell the difference between my 3 types, so you may be able to determine 2 different types, but as to which is which...!

I think they will keep in the soil for a bit, they will just keep growing so you will have bigger potatoes. I think it will be a while before they start rotting away or anything. The only risk would be Blight towards the end of the summer, if we got damp warm weather, but even then - second earlies should be OK to be dug up and stored, even earlies might be. I store them in a hessian bag in the cupboard. There are other more exciting ways to store them but for small amounts like we have a breathable bag in the dark is fine!

[Deleted User]

morg m I await your findings with bated breath. I don`t have a brilliant show of haulm with christi either, 9 out of 14 look good, 2 look weak and 3 haven`t appeared whereas charlotte and cara look amazing with excellent foliage and 100% growing

peter999

Planted some seed potatoes yesterday.

They had long shoots (chits), 8+ inches, should I have cut the shoots shorter ??

peter999

Biggles

peter999 wrote: »

Planted some seed potatoes yesterday.

They had long shoots (chits), 8+ inches, should I have cut the shoots shorter ??

If you had cut them, I'm not sure you'd have had anything come up; the shoots are the growing tips.

radiohelen

I'm just back off the lottie where I have discovered two big egg boxes full of potatoes I had clearly temporarily misplaced. They have all chitted nicely. Is it too late to put them in?