Have you thought of growing vegetables and flowers from seeds? In my experience, the taste of grow your own produce is just better than supermarket stuff and one gets a real sense of achievement and satisfaction out of producing your own food. So, now is a good time to plant potatoes. Even though it is a bit late in the season to buy them there are still companies who are supplying them such as Marshalls Seeds, Thompson and Morgan, Dobies etc..

Growing potatoes

Potatoes can be planted in potato sacks if you have a sunny place on your balcony, or patio. You don’t have to have a garden to grow them. Three potatoes to a sack is enough. Position the sack in a sunny area and half fill it with well-rotted home-made or bought compost and place three potatoes spaced wide apart and cover with about 15cm more compost. As the plants grow, add more compost, covering the stems of the plants, until the bag is full. Make sure the compost is kept moist but not soggy. Pick off any potato flowers as they form. When the foliage starts to turn yellow, empty the sack out to harvest the potatoes!If you have enough space in your garden for growing vegetables then potatoes are an ideal first crop because they are good at clearing the ground of weeds.

Chitting

Many people chit potatoes before planting them. Chitting is a process to encourage the growth of shoots in light and warm conditions before planting them in the soil. The theory is that by doing this, potatoes will grow more quickly and produce a larger and earlier crop than if they were planted straight into the soil. To chit potatoes place them in a used egg box or a shallow tray with the “eyes”on the potatoes facing upwards. After a couple of weeks knobbly purple-green things should start growing from the eyes. When they look like those in the photo they are ready for planting out.

Planting in the garden

To plant the potatoes in the garden start when the soil is warming up, about 8-10 degrees C or 45-50 F. Make a long trench 15 to 25cm deep and space them 30cm apart for salad potatoes and about 40cm for large maincrop ones. The rows should be 50 – 60cm apart allowing enough space to earth them up later. The chitted potatoes need to be placed so that the sprouting bits are facing upwards. If the weather is going to be cold putting a layer of fleece over the rows will protect the fragile leaves as they emerge.

The No-dig method

An alternative way of planting potatoes without digging is to drop them into holes made with a long-handled bulb planter, causing the least amount of soil disturbance. Placing horticultural fleece over the soil and pegging it down will provide a certain amount of protection from the cold, and when the leaves emerge it reduces the chance of them being scorched by a late frost.When the potatoes begin to grow you’ll see their green leaves breaking through the soil surface. The stems will emerge and continue to grow upwards. The new tubers will grow from these stems and so to get the maximum amount of potatoes the stems are covered up to the leaves using the soil in between the rows. This forms a sort of ridge and is a process called earthing up. You may need to do this a couple of times as the plants grow especially if you see the baby potatoes peeking out of the soil. They will need to be covered up otherwise they will become green and inedible.To get a good amount of potatoes the plants should be watered during a dry spell and the soil kept moist, but not waterlogged.

Hopefully, your potatoes will grow into big healthy plants with deep green leaves. At some point they will begin to form flower buds, but these should be removed so that they don’t waste energy which could otherwise be used to make bigger tubers. The potatoes will be ready to harvest when the leaves start to turn yellow and begin to die down.

It takes around 70 – 90 days for early potatoes the size of the ones you would use in salads.100 to 120 days for what’s called a maincrop potato – a large one used for mash. baking etc.Potato forks are traditionally used for harvesting. potatoes. They differ from normal garden forks in that the ends of the prongs are flattened to a disc shape, are spaced apart more widely and are slightly curved. This decreases the chance of accidentally skewering a potato when you harvest them from the plant. However, an ordinary garden fork will do the job. Harvesting potatoes is like finding treasure! Gently dig into the soil about 20cm from the base of each plant and at the same time hold and pull the stem so that you are uprooting the plant. Hopefully lots of potatoes will emerge from the soil! You may need to root around for them with the fork. Once you’ve gone down the row removing the plants and potatoes, go back again and dig through the soil to find any left behind.

And finally, you will have the choice of how to cook them, boiled, mashed or roasted?