Kitchen Garden Forum

I put my seed potatoes in a tray to chit this morning. Do you think I should give them swimming lessons?

Beryl.

Dear Beryl, i'm confident that by the time they are ready to plant, the soil will be a friable crumb and the weather will be warm and pleasant.

Just had my seed potatoes delivered from JBA, and very nice they look too.

Beryl (& buy little arm floats for them as well!)

Westi

Thanks Westi
Wish I had your confidence OH, you should see my plot. None of us are even attempting the paths now. One or two have sunk in the mud and had to leave their wellies behind.
I've seen it flooded before, we usually escape the worst but it's never been as bad as this. It's going to be another one of those challenging years.

Beryl.

My seed potatoes came last week and I am not chitting them yet but instead keeping them in the cold but frostfree garage, in the dark. If I chitted them now, they would be ready to plant far too early for our climes. I will start chitting them only when the eyes are 'waking up' .

I have some pink fir apples stood up in trays in the storeroom but they aren't shooting yet. Other varieties are not here yet, the PFAs are ones I've saved from my own.
I'm now feeling very lucky to have a plot at the top of a hill, you have my sympathy struggling with flooded plots.

MW

I am thinking of planting my earlies in wellies its the only thing down the plot that is anything like dry

I planted 6 Swift potatoes under a cloche in the tunnel yesterday. They had chitted very nicely from buying them on 16th January, mind I did realise after a couple of weeks I had forgotten to turn off the radiator in the spare bedroom after Christmas visitors. I usually plant outside under a cloche about 7th March but last year with the tunnel in its first year I had a good crop from 22nd February planting. I'll add another 6 on 21st then balance outside in March. First time with Swift instead of Rocket so two experiments at once.

Morning Geoff, i always find Swift a lot lighter in cropping abilities, but are very quick to to get to the cropping stage. Infact in some years, with the short growing tops, i could have been harvesting a couple of weeks earlier than when i did.

Yield worried me a bit but my wife thought they might have more flavour. It's difficult to find the best balance between earliness, yield and flavour - probably why there are so many varieties and opinions!