Kitchen Garden Forum

Hello All,
I was digging up my raised beds in preparation for the coming season and dug up some potatoes that I had forgotten about from last August. The plants had obviously died down a long time time ago, and while one or more tubers had rotted the vast majority looked perfectly fine. Cutting one open they looked rather fresh. Are these potatoes allright to eat? My neighbour said they should be fine to eat. If so would it be a good idea to leave potatoes in the ground until they are needed rather than digging them up and bagging them? I think not and am rather dubious about eating them but am I being too squemish and if they look fresh they should be allright? I would welcome other peoples view on the matter. Thank you in advance.

Hello Bloaterfish

We miss some every year too and find them when we come to winter dig. We eat them and they are superb! If you leave them in they will grow and produce more for the current season, but I think there is a school of thought that leaving them in can increase the likelihood of disease(?). Not sure if this is true or not, so someone else may be able to confirm or not as the case may be. It sounds as though you would not usually have planted potatoes this early(?), so should you decided to leave them in, they may need frost protection. I think you should go for it and eat them!

They will be fine to eat. I find the danger of leaving them in the ground is that they get so much slug damage as to be useless. Lucky you not to have such voracious slugs!

Thanks for your replies, I think I am quite lucky in not having a great slug problem which I put down to using raised beds made from wicker, which seem to deter all but the bravest of slug.

Out of interest they are called 'volunteer' potatoes as they stay in the trenches after the others and fight on through the winter.

Hi all,

I thought those potatoes were called "keepers". I must confess that I also leave mine to grow, but whatever variety they were I treat them as earlies and dig up all keepers or volunteers round about now, before the overwintered pests and diseases can really take hold.

mike