Growing Potatoes in Potato bags

[markiedarlin]

My nextdoor neighbour bought a kit with seed potatoes and potato bags. Said that he would start them off etc and would I like some. He very kindly gave me about 9 bags with some compost in the bottom about 3ins and a potato planted in each. the potato was bearly covered with compost but thought nothing of it. He said that once they started sprouting shoots to put more compost round the shoot.

Now I am wondering if this correct as have looked on the internet and have seen that you should plant the potato in about 4inches of compost then cover them with about another 6ins of compost - at the moment there's about a couple of centimetres if that and some are visible. I am a complete novice on this growing veggies thing (have only started this year) so all advice welcome with open arms

The instructions on our kit is that once they start shooting to completely cover in compost (not sure about how many inches) and keep repeating until they are growing out of the top of the bag.

Also I would say that once they are growing out of the bag you may need to water them more even if it rains. We found that the soil at the bottom of the bag was bone dray as the leaves were deflecting the rain water.

What a nice neighbour you have

potplant is right, keep covering with compost until you are about 5" from the top of the bag.
then just water daily and after the plants have flowered you will have potatoes. i planted mine roughly 6 weeks ago, and they are now as tall as me. grown in potato bags and old compost bags turned inside out
cheap as chips....so to speak

is it too late to plant some now?

No, it's not. The earlies should have been planted, but you can still plant "mid" and "late" ones. If you can find any left in the shops!