Earthing Up Potatoes

My potatoes are looking 'andsome!

In just a few weeks, the plants have shot up and are now a good foot or so high, with a thick covering of leaves. This means that the potatoes, hidden underneath the ground, should be growing well, too.

Unfortunately, just as the wanted plants are growing, so too are the weeds and so today it was time for a little bit of weeding. Luckily, the unwanted weeds were small enough to be pulled up by hand, which I did in between each row of potato plants.

The space now looking much clearer, I was told by my resident expert, to 'earth up' round the potatoes. As they get bigger, there is a danger that the potatoes themselves will start to emerge from the soil. This is bad news because, once in contact with the sunlight, they will turn green and become inedible. So, I scooped soil from in between the rows and mounded it on to each row of potatoes. This makes the depth between air and potato deeper, making it less likely for the potatoes to pop up as they continue to grow.

With any luck, I reckon I'll be eating home-grown potatoes by the end of May.

Jamie's Plot (Seed Potatoes, part 2)

I was lucky enough to visit my friend, Jamie's beautiful allotment at the weekend, down at Prussia Cove, in Cornwall. I think he's possibly the luckiest gardener, ever! Take a look at the view from his plot- it's gorgeous! (finally, I've added the photo!)

Jamie's a little bit more experienced than I am at gardening and has quite a large space to fill. I haven't measured it and neither has he but it must be somewhere in the region of 50 square metres that he's got to play with.

The plot hasn't been used for several years and so needed a lot of tlc before Jamie could begin to start planting. Brambles had pretty much taken over the whole site, so firstly he had to get his strimmer out and clear it all. Next up, he had to roughly mark out where he was going to have each plot and dig over the ground. He did this all by hand, using a shovel and then a hoe. It took him a whole afternoon to do this but, having watched him work, I think it would probably have taken me about two weeks. He then covered the freshly-dug soil with compost.

So far, he's planted his potatoes as finally the ground has warmed up enough to do so without delaying their growth. He's planted 40 of Rocket Gardens' seed potatoes; a few of each of our varieties.

Like me, Jamie has planted early varieties of potatoes, which should harvest by May. Not only does this mean we should get to eat our delicious crops sooner, rather than later, it also means we should avoid the perils of potato blight, which I hear is one of the greatest risks to potato crops. Although early varieties are particularly susceptible to the disease, it doesn't usually hit until July so we should miss it.

For those of you planning later potato crops, here is some info' about potato blight, as I understand it:

• Potato blight is a fungus-like organism, which affects the green parts of the potato plant, causing them to fall apart.


• Wet, soggy leaves are one of the causes of potato blight so watering the plants can help spread the disease. It's best to water the soil around the plant, rather than all over the leaves.


• Growing several varieties, especially when laid out in alternative rows, can help reduce the spread of the disease.


• Warm, dry, sunny conditions are the best way to fend off blight- those of you who have experienced our British 'Summers' can see why we need to worry about the disease!


• If you do get blight, pull off the infected areas and discard them by throwing them away or burning them- don't use them for compost.

I got my information from http://www.potato.org.uk/, which also has a blight watch service, so you can keep an eye on prevalence of the disease in your area.

Growing Potatoes (part 1)

What with winter lingering rather chillingly in the air and the inches of snow that some of the country have seen, the growing season has been put back by a couple of weeks. That's actually quite lucky for a late-starter like me though because it means I haven't missed the boat to get some early potatoes in the ground.

Not so very long ago, I imagined that you just dug a hole in the ground, stuck in some potatoes you had lying around that you hadn't yet baked, fried or mashed, and waited for them to magically sprout more little tatties. Surprise, surprise; there's actually a little more to it than that.

In order to get any harvest at all, you have to use chitted seed potatoes. (Chitted means potatoes that have little green shoots poking out them.) Each shoot is new growth and, once in the ground, will be where the new harvest of potatoes will grow from. A good number of shoots on each seed potato is 2 to 3- any more than that and there won't necessarily be enough food from the original potato to supply all the new growth.

So, I've had a delivery of ready-chitted potatoes and I'm ready to get going! Although I could have planted them straight into the garden, the ground is still a little bit cold (the ideal temperature to get them moving quickly is 9 degrees c. Anything lower than 4 degrees c and they stay dormant.) So, instead I've put the seed potatoes into egg boxes (one potato in each egg holder.) I've placed them with their green shoots facing upwards and set them all on a sunny windowsill in my kitchen. I also kept each potato variety seperated and labeled them, too- the theory being that I can do the same when I plant them out and be able to keep track of what I'm digging up.

I'm using Maris Peer, Ambo, Orla, Charlotte and Colleen varieties. As it's my first go, I thought I'd try several different sorts to see if any grow better than others and also which I like the taste of. It's also no coincidence that these varieties are available on the Rocket Gardens website- but then I figure, there's got to be some benefit to working for the family firm!

Setting the potatoes in egg boxes is great because it keeps them upright and (hopefully) the shoots will grow nice and straight. Alternative holders would be egg cups or even cup cake holders. I ran out of egg boxes though and so I used a cereal box, clumping several potatoes together, and they don't seem to be any the worse for it. (I can tell I'm not going to be a particularly fastidious gardener!)

It's been beautifully sunny and spring-like over the weekend and the shoots have responded to the warmth already- I'm sure it's not my imagination and over-enthusiasm and the shoots really have got longer. I'll have to wait a couple of weeks, until the shoots have reached 2-3 cm in length and then I can plant the potatoes into the ground.

Partly because it's necessary and partly because I'm too excited to be able to leave my potato-related activity at that, I also started preparing the ground outside this weekend. I've dug over the raised bed, which is going to house them and also covered the ground in compost. I then dug in some organic worm cast fertiliser for good measure, in order to make sure the ground is full of nutrients when it comes to planting time.

Considering this has been my first full weekend dedicated to being a 'real' gardener, I think it went pretty well. It's been brilliant having an excuse to be outside, and digging up compost feels like a much more wholesome calorie-burning activity than going for a run. So far, so good!