Nothing beats the taste of home grown potatoes cooked fresh from the ground. One of my all time favorite feasts has to be freshly harvested new potatoes along with freshly harvested broad beans. Both these crops are some of the first to be ready in spring. Lightly steamed and served together with a good chunk of best salted butter makes a meal fit for a king.
Growing your own potatoes is quite simple. They do take up quite a bit of space when planted traditionally. They can be grown in a barrel or bucket very successfully too if you are short of space. If I was very short of space I would probably forsake potatoes in preference of the more expensive crops that I could produce at home, but luckily I don’t have to make that choice.
I’m growing First Earlies. Second Earlies and Maincrops this year. Planting of all is very much the same with only the spacings being different – the later varieties being further apart to allow growth of larger crops. I normally order my seed potatoes from Thompson & Morgan and usually also include a Late Maincrop. However I got caught out by the coronavirus this year and had to dash around getting what I could before lockdown so I didn’t miss my planting window. I grabbed what they had in my local B&Q and have to say both the quality and the price were very good.
The First Earlies went in the last week of March. Second Earlies today. The maincrop should be in the ground by the end of April.Before planting the seed potatoes I lay them out in the light, a bright windowsill or greenhouse being ideal, in order for them to chit or sprout. After a few days the seed potatoes will start to send out little sprouts of growth. This gives them a head start when planted and results in quicker growth and hopefully heavier crops. I like my chit’s to be around 30mm before planting.
Planting is simply a case of taking out a trench around 150mm deep or if you have compost available perhaps 170mm deep and add a 20mm layer of compost to the bottom of the trench. I had a good supply of home made compost so did this. I would be unlikely to buy compost for this purpose however if I didn’t have homemade. The potatoes are laid in the trench around 300mm apart (for earlies) with the sprouts uppermost where possible. Then back fill the trench gently firming the soil as you go. Follow it up with a good water and wait for nature to work it’s magic. You should start to see the first sprouts of green above ground within a couple of weeks.
