Growing Potatoes...

[charliecat]

Those long shoots...am i trying to bury them or are they the plant thats gonna grow up???

You're trying to bury them. Deep.

ok thank you :) And so once I have done this, what do I do, wait? and then what? please lol

I take it you're planting early potatoes now?

Plant them in holes about 6" deep, and about 12" apart. Sometimes people plant them in a trench rather than digging indivisual holes. Cover them, and earth them up as they grow - when the plants are about 6" tall cover them with earth, apart from the top couple of inches of plant. You can do this again when the plants reach 6" again, but you don't have to. If your plants are closely spaced you might not be able to do a second earthing up anyway. Earthing up stops the potatoes turning green, and should give a bigger yield of potatoes.

With some later varieties it's best to wait until the flowers die but with early crop potatoes the spuds are usually ready to dig up when the flowers come out fully. Early potatoes don't store well so dig them as you need them rather than digging them all up together.

Thank You :) Had no idea what i was meant to be doing but have ambition :) Will refer back to this thread when i need too :) Cheers.
Dont know what an early potatoe is lol

Earlies just means they're the ones you can plant early in the season, so they crop earlier. They make better new potatoes than old ones.

Good luck - have fun!

Well my spud plants are doing REALLY well, about a foot tall and very healty looking, do I keep shoving soil volcano style around them, or can i stop now?

bump, have left them as they are but is that the right thing?

hmm, I'm not an expert (am growing them for the first time this year!) but have basically kept earthing up mine, so far as I can - did it again today, prob. have done it once a week really....mine are just coming into flower now, might actually have some potatoes soon!!!

Good luck!

hmmm, ok will hump up some more earth today then, thanks:)

just to test, dug up one plant today which has been flowering for a while, but definitely found the potatoes v small, would definitely benefit from a bit longer in the ground so I will leave them till they have finished flowering...tell you what, though they were tiny they were DELICIOUS, well worth the effort and I can't wait till I can dig em all up!!!!

just to test I have managed to leave mine as they are so far, no flowers on mine yet though...I wish I had planted mine in something with a perspex side so I could SEEEEEEEEE LOL

yes, was purely in the interests of scientific research

ok...my potatoes are about 4ft tall and just beggining to flower. Is this right? Or have I got bonkers spuds?

I am no expert either but we grew them last year and thought we had pulled them all out. I still have a massive crop this year and they are about 3ft with flowers, so I will probably have a dig on Sunday. If there are enough small ones, I will take them away with me. Yummy. I think that potatos must be the easiest thing to grow, ever!! as we didn't even plan these ones

Oh good So I wait till they have flowered yeah?