Growing Early Potatoes

As spring arrives and winter recedes its time to plant out early potatoes. Its hard not to get excited in anticipating delicious homegrown potatoes in early summer

The right variety

When choosing your seed potatoes don't let the abundance of choice confuse you. Generally speaking, growing the potatoes remains the same regardless of variety, its the potatoes attributes that differ. For example Rocket as the names suggest will reach harvest fastest, as will swift. Some varieties attributes that lend themselves to certain cooking conditions. Swift is better for boiling and Charlotte is a great all rounder. If you've suffered from disease previously, Accent and Casablanca offer better disease resistance.

Chitting

Its possible to encourage seed potatoes to start growing prior to planting through a technique known as chitting. Place your seed potatoes in a cool, bright location free from frost. Ideal places are windowsills, greenhouses, and garages. A common method is to place the seed potatoes into a box or egg carton with their eyes facing upwards. After a few weeks you will notice shoots appearing.

Potatoes do well in free draining soil, and prefer loose medium rather than heavy clay. Adding in some extra compost or well rotted manure will enhance soil fertility.

Preparing the soil

Planting

Ensure spring has warmed the soil up and no frost is forecast. Dig trenches 15cm deep and 30cm apart and place your seed potatoes into the trenches with eyes/chits facing upwards, leave 30cm between potatoes. Cover the potatoes gently with soil and water well.

Within a few weeks new shoots will appear, mound soil around the new shoots leaving tip exposed to light. Repeating this process every few weeks will ensure tubers are protected from frost and light as they develop.

Potatoes enjoy consistent moisture levels as they develop tubers, provide a good watering but don't allow the ground to become waterlogged. Adding a potassium rich feed will also help the tubers develop.

Considerations

Slugs and aphids can damage potato plants if left unchecked, but require no special prevention techniques than any other plant susceptible to these pests. Its always best to attract natural beneficial predators to control populations. Blight can also spread onto your potato plants causing foliage to die back. Where foliage is showing signs of blight, cut off and dispose, do not put affected foliage on compost piles as blight can survive and spread.

Harvesting

Once potato plants flower that your signal to harvest. Gently use a fork to loosen and lift the soil, working in a circular motion around the plant moving inwards. Its still worth harvesting plants affected by blight as tubers may still have formed before the foliage died.