Kitchen Garden Forum

I have ordered these tubers from the KG shop. Does anyone have any experience, tips or guidance for growing these potatoes. I plan to grow them in bags of my own compost as I have no ground/border space.

Dear Elle, not trying to be a kill-joy but, they are very prone to getting blight. But if you can avoid this you will be enjoying some lovely new potatoes later in the year.

Whats your gorgeous dogs name by the way?

Thank you Old Herbacious, I am not entirely clear what blight is yet, I keep reading about it and realise it is bad, but what the signs are I don't know. I am hopeful that I might avoid it as no one has grown potatoes around here for several years. I and my two neighbours are quite isolated by fields from anyone else, although quite close to each other. Another term that confuses me is haulms, but I will get to the bottom of it. I am guessing something to do with stalks at the moment!

My beautiful dog is Merlin, a working Golden retreiver. He doesn't look quite so cute now sadly as he is 3 now and was only 12 weeks in the photo, but he is still like my third child! I have two very boisterous boys, and an obediant dog is a joy!

Dear Elle, you will be able to tell if you have blight if, you see large circular brown spots on the leaves, these spread in a matter of days to cover the plant, then spreads down into the soil to effect the actual potatoes, it also effects Tomatoes.
Well thats a simple explanation.

The haulm is indeed all the growth above ground.

I know you will think me rather strange, but i prefer animals when they have grown up a bit, so i'm sure he is still cute.

I can remember being a touch boistorous when i was a boy.

Dear Elle,

OH, still has his moments


But also like others here, he does give some very helpful advice, but don't tell OH I'd let you know that

Dear OH,

Thanks for the help. I followed some of the links on here last night and found myself on the potato blight notification website so I now feel slightly better informed on the subject than before. I certainly hadn't realised how serious it could be.

The Carlingford's will be my first foray into Pots, so I will take care and be observant

I grew them last year on the allotment and they got blight, you might be better off in your garden as we grew them in a communal garden / large raised bed at a volunteer project that I ran amd they did not got blight and cropped beautifully in time for Christmas. It seems that in isolation toms and spuds do better with blight, but worse in allotment and farming enviroments.

They will need frost protection if necessary, and I did wonder if a home made fleece bag would help against blight, does anyone have any experience of this?

CoMpO

My Carlingfords are now flowering and I am wondering how long I can/should leave them before harvesting? They have only been in the tubs since late August I think and my gut feeling is that they need longer, but when I read my veg book it said new potatoes can be harvested from a soon as the flowers finish. I don't want to rush into harvest, but I don't want them to get ruined somehow.

Why not harvest one plant, Elle, and see what yu get? If the tubers are too small for your liking, leave the rest till later.

You have done well blight-wise. Th past 6 weeks have been very dry, so blight hasn't had much chance to get hold. When it does, of if it does, it will affect the leaves before the tubers, so you can dig them all up and they should be fine.

Good luck
mike

Hi Elle,
Rather than digging a whole root you can very carefully unearth a root without actually digging them up and see what you find. Be very careful and if they are not ready to dig you can replace the soil and leave then to grow on.
JB.

Thanks guys, I will give that a go at the weekend on the plant that is furthest along.

wish I'd known about the blight problem before I ordered some - I've lost the lot to blight well before there was any chance of even the smallest tubers...

I am really sorry to hear that - how frustrating.