Potatoes are divided into types from early to late and perform as described, the high yielding later ones are used for storing and not only crop later than earlies, but are planted later as well.
The potatoes are set out using trays or other containers such as eggboxes in January in a frost free light place to encourage shoots to grow, (chitting). In late March or early April, when the soil has started to dry, dig a trench to a spades depth and half fill with manure or compost. Cover with an inch of soil and lay the sprouted potatoes between 12 and 18 inches apart (30-45cm), sprouts pointing up. Fill the trench with soil, and label especially if you grow several varieties.
From being planted on 25th March to flowering and digging on 6th June as shown here is ony 73 days during which time, the only maintainance was a mulch of
horse manure when the plants were 6 inches (15cm) high.
I do not 'earth' them up as the mulch supresses weeds and avoids greening of the tubers. Note the remnants of rotted couch grass roots in the soil - nothing goes to waste on my plot.
Once the plants have flowered you can start digging the first plants. This variety is called 'Bonnie' a second early, which came free from Thompson and Morgan.
This first plant produced the 1.3Kg shown, and 2 weeks later the plants were producing over 2Kg each.
By the second weekk of July, 3Kg a plant was usual but heavy rain caused quality problems as shown below.
Three weeks of wet June weather in 2007 caused inevitable problems, the first of which was splitting of the tubers. Some split in the soil, providing a great access for slugs and insects, and some were so tense that they split open while I was washing them!
On the 8th July, the blight that I was dreading appeared overnight and as I was leaving for 2 weeks holiday, I decided to dig up the Bonnie potatoes.
Two 8x4 beds produced 54Kg of perfect potatoes and 30 Kg of split ones which I gave away. They were perfectly edible but would not store.
It is very easy to get carried away planting potatoes and unless you want to give them away, or have a large family, I would suggest that you grow about 5-10 tubers of several varieties of varying degrees of lateness. This will provide a sucession of crops and as there are differences in the suceptibility of these different varieties to pests and deseases then you are unlikely to lose everything.
Should you grow supermarket potatoes? is a question often asked.
The seed potato industry and companies that sell them have a vested interest in insisting that you should only plant 'accredited' virus-free tubers.
My opinion is that Tesco are not going to have virus ridden potatoes on their shelves and this year as usual grew a variety (Exquisa) that I had bought and liked, and next year will try a different one as well as Exquisa as it is easy to select a few nice tubers and eat the rest.
Apart from the unnecessary earthing up already mentioned, chitting is not necessary as you will notice how potatoes left in the ground will grow the next year. The only advantage in chitting is that every tuber can be seen to be growing whereas gaps will occur in rows of unchitted tubers, presumably due to rot.
Blight need not be fatal provided affected leaves are removed immediately, it is rare to see every plant affected simultaneously. It is only if blight is left unattended for some time that it grows down into the tubers.
Have a look at this page for a quick review of my plot. Click in this box to view it.
You have got your allotment and are ready to start. Click in this box to begin