Kitchen Garden Forum

Really depressed. Bought some King Edward and Desiree from B&Q (2 for a fiver). Chitted them as normal. Planted them out around 20th April. Only 6 have surfaced so far. Earlies are doing great. Any ideas anyone? Did I plant them too deep/not deep enough? Should I abandon hope altogether? The soil is pretty awful but the row of Wilja I planted in the same section is doing fine.

Dear Amyfox, i can't see any reason why they shouldn't still surface, i would have to have a little dig to see what is going on.

AMYFOX wrote:Did I plant them too deep/not deep enough?

How deep did you plant them? It's hard to say without knowing. Certainly you shouldn't earth up tatties until they actually show above ground.

I wouldn't give up on them quite yet, unless you've got something else you're planning on putting in instead. Having a little exploratory dig around will do no harm. Presumably they had healthy sprouts on them when you planted them, if you chitted them beforehand.

The depth may have varied according to how cloddy the soil was but I read later that King Edwards should be planted 4" deep and I was several inches deeper than that. One or two have surfaced in the past week or so. Maybe the wet weekend will give them a boost.

Dear Amyfox, the slightly deeper planting depth will not make much difference to the potatoes coming up. Infact it might be the ones that are deeper that have popped up first, the reason for me saying this is, if the ground is rather cloddy and it has been very dry, the shallower ones will have stayed in dry soil, so not growing as quick.

With the rain, i'm sure the rest will soon be through.