potatoes

[Johnboy]

Hi Barry,
In my posting I am referring to commercial crops of Potatoes. I only ever grow first earlies on my plot because I rely on the commercial crops for my main crops. With my first earlies they are now grown in specially raised beds. I grow them really as you say. I plant at roughly 6-8" deep and then keep adding soil until the top of the bed is reached.
I prepare the soil with manure and place the seed Potato and then place the raised bed over them and cover with soil and as the growing buds appear then put a couple of inches over and keep on doing so. The sides of my beds are 12" so there is probably about 10" above in all because the soil drops during the season. I didn't weigh anything last year but had masses of reasonable egg sized spuds. I grow Maris Bard which is to me are the greatest. They went on until some were large enough to make chips and they were super chips.
To prevent getting green Potatoes it is essential to earth-up.
JB.

[jane E]

The reason that the potatoes are termed early, 2nd early, main is that they take different times to reach maturity. So something like Rocket will reach a harvestable crop, if I remember correctly, in 10 weeks.Whereas a main crop will take 20 weeks. The reason people tend to sow earlies earlier is that they want new potatoes as soon as they can get them in the spring. So a late February planting would give you new potaoes during the end of May. However, this presents problems with frost which will damage a potato crop, so an early planted crop will all have to be protected in some way. People are prepared to do this for a small number of earlies, but not for the whole of their potato crop. So they plant out the bulk of their crop at a time when they will arrive through the soil after the threat of frost has passed and that is a different time for different regions and altitudes.
Reallybear, I would go down to your local allotment and see what time they are planting their main crops of potatoes. I'd get a few earlies in under cover of some sort beginning of March. The other thing I'd do is buy a chillington hoe for earthing up. They are the quickest, easiest way of doing it. Buy on the internet. The local garden centres don't usually have them.

[Mike Vogel]

The gurus have more or less said it all, Reallybear. I also suggest you can learn by trial and error.

I fleece over a patch of soil where I intend to put in my first earlies. This I do round about now. I mid-March I put them in uncder the fleece, which will have warmed up the ground a bit and will continue doing so until the crop has matured. This has in the past taken less than the 70 days suggested in boks and by others, and I've had new potatoes in mid-May. But I don't think that's so unusual, reading these posts.

The rest of the earlies I sow in late March, keeping some back for an April sowing. Second earlies also go in then and again about a month later. But the maincrop I put in early - late March to mid-April. That's because they take longer to mature, 150 days or 170 for late maincrops. So if you don't want to be digging your last spuds up in boggy soil, which is an unleasant job as well as being bad for the soil, time your sowing with this in mind.

However, I have found that maincrop potatoes come to maturity earlier in hot dry weather, such as we often get here in Bedfordshire. Last year was an exception, and I was happily digging up my Pink Fir Apple and last remaining Sarpo Mira in mid-October after a wet summer but a dryish September which had not yet boggified the soil.

In the end you do what you find best afetr a few years learning. Then it's a matter of what you can when you can.

Good luck.

mike

[Cider Boys]

Yes, Jane and Mike, you both give sound advice.

In the end it all depends on the weather and good fortune.

Barney