The Tatties Thread 2020

I had forgotten this but when I had a polytunnel way back, I put potatoes in a corner and covered them in dry grass cuttings (sometimes les than dry) … They did well and I never lacked for potatoes. They are very versatile and real survivors. I have two old buckets with them in in hay now as I cannot dig.

 

Why do I do this to myself? I bought some butter today, I have chives growing AND I have charlotte spuds in the garden, no brainer with a homemade burger, (burger not as you know it).

 

Hi all, can someone give me some pointers with main crop potatoes. I have three sets of 5 gallon tubs with some in. On one some small amount of leaves has started to turn yellow and brown. I know there probably a billion things I should consider but if it does die off, is it 3 weeks to harvest?

 

Sometimes bottom leaves go yellow, as long as the top ones are still green the plants and tubers are still growing.

 

It started with one but the whole flowers now look like they are dying. Can't remember the potatoes now, but I did three different ones, might of accidentally used an early species

 

Looks a bit fungal to me
Mine often get like that, as long as the whole plant isn't dying I wouldn't be that bothered.
Have you had a lot of wet weather?

 

I'll keep an eye on it and put it in quarantine

 

Dug up some of my estima tatties today. I'm really happy. That's just one plant. Never grown potato before.....never grown much of anything. Some nice cod for tea tonight with the last of my broccoli and some minted potato.

 

Things to alleviate lockdown boredom number 6, measure the height of your potatoes.

My single stem Kondor plants are now up to 1.5m and still growing, might even make it to the top of the polytunnel. Wonder if there's a tallest potato plant competition?

 

I'm a newcomer here but have grown pots for years. This year I had some raised beds positioned and planted two early varieties. Then the 'little' cloche arrived. Must look more carefully at dimensions as it fits one bed perfectly (and only £24!) It did the trick anyway and plants pushing polythene and starting to flower! Dug a few and delicious but feel I should have had something more demanding under the cloche that I screwed down onto timber bed!
Some years ago I kept bees here and, you've guessed it, they fertilised the pot flowers! Masses of poisonous tomato like berries! So..... I planted the real seeds the following spring and planted many. The resulting plants produced tubers of, presumably parents, which were both purple and white! The original plants were purple King Edwards. Must be said none of the 'new' pots were any real difference so that was the end of that experiment.

 

Some are now above the 1.8m above ground horizontal rail and I'm adding canes to train them right up into the apex.

 

Kondor spuds now over 7 feet tall, growth rate appears to be 1 foot/10 days. I'm adding diagonal string supports in addition to canes as they're sideshooting in profusion at higher levels. They're nearly at the polytunnel apex, where they'll be 8 feet tall.

I don't know what to do then as there's no advice to be found about when/if to nip out the growing points of potato plants . And there's many weeks of growing season left. At their current rate of growth they'll be 10 feet tall by the end of August .

If you look into the top left hand corner, you'll see the horizontal rail at 6 feet high shown in my image above, and see how much they've grown since my last post. I wanted to get all the plants in the image, but haven't got a lens wide enough.

 

One week later and they're up to 8 feet tall, right up into the polytunnel apex, but they're branching out everywhere from top to bottom which might slow them down, otherwise they'll get to 11 feet by the end of August.






P.S. First pic, bottom left hand corner is my blue butterfly/bee net, to rescue insects from my tunnel.

 

These are some king edwards I dug up recently...at least I think they are...must pay more attention to what's going in