Want to plant potatoes now. Help please!!!

katskorner

chrislee765 wrote:

For an organic slug repellent, scatter broken egg shell around the plant.

This won't be effective underground where the potatoes are and the slugs are in abundance.. You can get slug resistant varieties of potatoes - like Kestrel (second earlies) that taste lovely and grow to a decent size. Always worth a try!

soba

Help!! Potato greenery is about 8" high, have we left it too late to cover them up?
OH and DS are out in the garden now raiding the compost bin, ready to cover them up. I left it for a while because only one lot of shoots (although there are quite a lot of them) have grown really well, I was hoping that the others might catch up. Advice gratefully accepted of course, still hoping to have home grown spuds for Xmas dinner. Do we have to cover them completely? ie no greenery to be seen??

Freyja_2

I have grown potatoes for the first time this year - can anyone tell me wha tthe green 'fruits' are that grew on the above ground stem when the flowers died please??
I have also managed to get some tomates to grow first the first time too - just waiting for them to ripen. i know technically they should have been long gone but maybe the wierd weather we have had this year has confused the plants - who knows!
Thanx

squeaky

soba wrote:

Help!! Potato greenery is about 8" high, have we left it too late to cover them up?
OH and DS are out in the garden now raiding the compost bin, ready to cover them up. I left it for a while because only one lot of shoots (although there are quite a lot of them) have grown really well, I was hoping that the others might catch up. Advice gratefully accepted of course, still hoping to have home grown spuds for Xmas dinner. Do we have to cover them completely? ie no greenery to be seen??

I used to bank up the soil to be an inch or so (2.5cm) deeper around the plant about once a week until I couldn't actually do it any more without taking soil off the next row. You just need to cover any potatoes that show through because they'll turn green if you don't. Plus it gives more growing room for them. The greenery should be allowed to grow and will typically make about 18" (50cm) above the soil even when banked up. Ish. Depends on varieties and the season etc.

squeaky

Freyja wrote:

I have grown potatoes for the first time this year - can anyone tell me wha tthe green 'fruits' are that grew on the above ground stem when the flowers died please??

They'll be seed pods I reckon. Normally you pick the flowers off so that the plant puts all its energy into growing potatoes. You should pick these off too.

djohn2002uk

Freyja wrote:

I have grown potatoes for the first time this year - can anyone tell me wha tthe green 'fruits' are that grew on the above ground stem when the flowers died please??
I have also managed to get some tomates to grow first the first time too - just waiting for them to ripen. i know technically they should have been long gone but maybe the wierd weather we have had this year has confused the plants - who knows!
Thanx

The "fruits" are poisonous. Pick them off and dispose of them. Idealy not in the compost bin.

As for having potatoes for Christmas, very unlikely in the garden. Titchmarsh will have grown his in a container and kept it in the greenhouse. Remember, summer vegetables are like your lawn. Doesn't grow at the low temperatures that we get through late Autumn and Winter. That's why most veg are sown in the Spring when the warmer weather is on the way.
A couple of exceptions to this are Spring Cabbage (you can buy plants now) and Aquadulce Broad Beans which can be planted now for early crops next year. The beans will keel over in hard frosts but will always recover and will arrive mostly too early to be attacked by Black Fly.

Cut the lower leaves off your tomatoes now to let more air and sun get to the Tomatoes. Now it's getting colder they are not going to grow much more, especially if they are outdoors, and they will ripen indoors after being picked. You can place them in a box or a drawer and put a banana in with them. The gas given off by bananas is the same gas used by tomato plants for ripening the fruit.

squeaky

djohn2002uk wrote:

The "fruits" are poisonous. Pick them off and dispose of them. Idealy not in the compost bin.

I never knew they were poisonous! Wow! Then again - I've never actually seen any because my old uncle, a lifetime farm labourer, told me to always pick the flowers off as soon as they show up.

ashmit

still haven't forgiven the caterpillars for shredding my spring cabbage

soba

Thanks squeaky and djohn2002uk, OH and DS have completely covered the shoots today. It's keeping the littlun good for a while - I've told him it's the potato that he planted that's doing so well. At the end of the day it's a project thats cost us nothing and we may possibly get a couple of spuds out of it! Thanks for the advice, appreciated as always.

Curry_Queen

Sorry for going off-topic but just wanted to ask soba if she is Japanese?

Just that every time I see your name I think of soba noodles :drool: