Kitchen Garden Forum

How are everyone else's potatoes doing in this awful weather?



Guy

Hi Guy

I hardly like to admit it on here, but we have had a bit of drizzle yesterday and one shower this morning, otherwise sunny with a bit of breeze. So much for the stories you hear of wet North Wales!

Your potatoes look as though they'll survive.

Alan

Dear Guy, the tops of mine look worse than your's at the moment, but i wouldn't worry, the potatoes will be just fine under the ground.

My tatoes are in a bag this year - have just moved and not the space. They look v. healthy but are mightily sheltered. Just seen the forecast - FROST!!!! Oh no!!!!! Just hope my little patch is well enough sheltered, totally surrounded by 6' of fencing.

Sorry, Guy, about your potatoes, but we like, Alan, have had hardly any rain at all over this weekend, just a bit of drizzle but mostly sunshine and a fresh north-easterly wind. I am more worried about the frost forecast for tonight - might gather all our old cloches and flecces and cover the tatties. Haven't planted anything else remotely risky yet.

Hello Guy

You may consider this weather as awful but your potatoes will not. If the tubers are developing a good soaking enables the small tubers to bulk up. We have cleared and sold most of our Rocket earlies and my son is planting out leeks in the vacated land tonight. Our Maris Bard and Pentland Javelin were later going in but will benefit from the rain and I am sure yours will be fine.

Barney

We popped down to the allotment yesterday afternoon the first time since last Thurday to water the greenhouse tomatoes, too wet to do any work, all the veggies were standing up well after all the rain, potatoes, r.beans, sweetcorn, caulies, cabbages,parsnips ect. sweet peas were the only things that looked poorly.
We had a bad storm this afternoon heavy rain, thunder and lightening it lasted about a half hour and then the sun came out.

Bren

I had a telephone call last night....apparently we had a frost the other night and the taters/beans got hit pretty badly...
I haven't seen the damage yet but when the same thing happened a couple of years ago my plot suffered lightly in comparison to others...I hope that I have got off lightly this time too.

Hi Weed,
We had a frost here last night or this morning.
The temp here at 6am was 2C. in a sheltered area.
I do not plant out here for another two weeks as we suffer quite badly from late frosts. My Potato experiment is covered in HD fleece so should be unaffected. Certainly any Tomatoes planted out here would have bit the dust and Beans would be the same.
JB.

We had a frost here on Tuesday night and I've not yet been to the plot to check on the spuds. The few other things I'd put out were heavily fleeced so should be OK. I'm planning to plant out from tonight and hope that the thunder and hailstones we had yesterday evening have gone away. The thunder was so loud that the pans were rattling in the cupboard and that hail must have done some damage to the plots. It's a gorgeous morning but showers forecast later.

We went to the allotment today to do some weeding, no damage done by frost on our plot or on about 7 plots around us, all the other plots was hit by the frost, potatoes and beans so we were lucky.
There are some big warehouses close by us with lights on all night so that may have given us some proction.

Bren

Dear Bren, glad your stuff wasn't caught by the frost, everyone needs a little bit of luck sometimes.

We were so looking forward to the promised rain over the weekend (which we never got), then there were some heavy downpours yesterday in the area and - guess what - we didn't get any again. I planted out some celeriac (Prinz) and dwarf beans (The Prince) today and covered them with fleece. But what was noticeable was the dryness of the soil. After a very dry April, we had two wet days at the beginning of May and since then almost no rain, certainly not enough to penetrate the ground to the roots. You wouldn't think we lived in the north of England where it's supposed to be rainy all the time!

amazing how areas vary, here we have had rain every day, virtually, since the beginning of May.

I managed to get to the plot yesterday afternoon and it wasn't as bad as I had thought

I seem to have had three potato plants hit and only a couple of leaves on each at that...my neighbour has had most of her plants caught and the two potato sections are only about twenty feet apart...must be a frost pocket that sweeps in a particular band across the site...amazing