Tatties

Not very well if I'm honest. Most of the leaves have gone, but, new growth is coming up out of the soil from different areas
I've realised I won't be winning this years competition, but, its a good learning curve and will get me off to a good start for next years competition

 

Thank you I'm nurturing away

 

I've started harvesting my experimental tatties in a grow bag and find that there's a lot of small tubers that haven't matured and the tops are well and truly over. Not a problem except the Pink Fir Apples are even lower cropping then they usually are, some lovely tubers, just a lot that haven't made it to maturity. I've still got some in the bags and will crop as required, one half grow bag, with one tuber is producing enough crop for two dinners for two people.

 

Oh dear, all of my Picasso potatoes have big brown blotches on the leaves! Have cut off the haulms and chucked them on the bonfire. Normally I'd immediately spray Bordeaux Mixture on the adjoining spuds that haven't been affected yet, but I'm getting ready to take our daughter to a restaurant for a pre-birthday meal.

 

Now that there's blight, wilting, bad canker and blackleg amongst my spuds, I decided to dig them all up.

Unfortunately my biggest spud at 2 lbs 2.25 ozs is so badly affected it'll be well rotten by the time of the BH Monday Village Show. It'll go for mash ASAP and be used to make cheesey potato scones.



Biggest Picasso weighed 1 lb 11 ozs. Mrs Scrungee is going to have it as a jacket spud.

 

All from one " Maris Peer " ....



Got about another five to dig out as and when needed.

 

Got a 1st for my heaviest 3 spuds, despite all the biggest ones succumbing to disease.

Wont feel bad now if I go out and dig some bigger ones up.

 

Well done Sargent

 

This year will be a glorious year for the potato (hopefully) as we're doing our own spud in a bucket growing competition here at the Community Garden.

But, before that, the first main crop ready for lifting is "Jane Dough" - grown from a single tuber of unknown variety that was given to me by a member.

Here they are in their prime on the right-hand side.


So, the plants will produce tubers with white skins.


Some time later.


As if by magic (there's even an object to gauge relative size).



Upon closer inspection, you can see scab on the tubers which tells me that conditions were too dry and that I will need to mix in more organic content in order to improve water retention should I want to plant potatoes here again.

Scab is only skin deep, so when you peel it away, what remains is perfectly edible.

And, delicious boiled, mashed, roasted or deep-fried (of the five biggest ones).



They tasted exactly like the chips that you buy from the chippy.


So, "Jane Dough" is a white potato, not resistant to common scab and suitable for deep frying in vegetable oil. Any ideas on what her real identity could be?

 

Judgement day for the Spud In A Bucket growing competition that we started in late March.





My entry was Number 4, weighing a total of 1.995kg: winning me a silver medal.








Gold actually went to Number 13, weighing an impressive 2.175kg.

Next year.... Next year, that gold will be mine.

 

Earlier this year, I tried my hand at grafting TomTatoes - this is what happened to the ones that did not make it:















Not bad for a square meter plot that also yielded about 400g of radishes and 3kg of cherry tomatoes.

 

Of the five failed grafted TomTatoes, three were planted in the plot pictured above.

So, two remaining, and I also had two pot bound runner beans that needed to be transplanted asap.

Yep, you've guessed it...

Conventional wisdom says that a plant can only be grafted to another plant belonging to the same family, specifically, the same genus of plants.

Potato, tomato, aubergine all belong to the Solanum genus of the Solanaceae family, and runner beans to the Phaseolus genus of the Fabaceae family. So, not compatible with each other.

Of course, there is the possibility of a "bridge" plant that is compatible with two different families and, hence, an indirect graft could be done via this bridge.

However, no known bridges exist for the potato and the runner bean, atleast not to my knowledge.

With all of that in mind, I did it anyway - grafting runner bean scions to potato rootstocks with trimmed down shorter stems, that is.

In full flush - 28th July 2016.


Today.



Nope, it didn't work - the grafts failed. But, for the seven days in the healing chamber and a further five days indoors at room temperature, the grafts looked like it did.

It was only three days after transplanting the grafted plants to their final locations did the runner bean scions exhibit signs of wilting, eventually flopping to one side and shrivelling up.

Luckily, I did not waste the surplus bean roots - I planted those too. Thus, I got both a bean crop and a potato crop.




Harvested today.



Moral of the story?

Always hedge your bets!