Subscribe with Bloglines At last I've got my plot!: Experiment a success!

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Experiment a success!

 
Back in July (19th) I tried some later planting of spuds to get a so-called Christmas dinner crop of new potatoes. They were Charlotte, from Mr Fothergills. There were 15 tubers and I put them in one of our deep beds in the Kitchen Garden here at home.
In September the tops were all brown so I cut them down; but left the spuds in the ground under a good layer of grass mowings to keep out light.
Today I dug up one plant's worth and was pleasantly surprised. The plate above shows what came up, and the weight of the product of that one plant was 1.1kilos.
I have no idea if that is good or bad, but I am pleased with it and feel that the experiment was worth trying.
I haven't tried potatoes in the deep beds before as I was worried about earthing up and getting the soil all over the paths. I didn't do much earthing up but did put lots of mowings on the bed to build it up.
They were so easy to dig up. I pulled up the rotten stalk stubs I'd left in to show where they were, then just felt around in the soft soil til I found the spuds. I finished off with the fork but most of them were found just by feeling for them
Posted by Picasa

5 Comments:

At 31/10/09 7:40 pm, Blogger Jan said...

It looks a pretty good crop for one plant to me! We didn't get anything like it, and most of ours were quite small as well, but I suppose ours didn't get much water.

 
At 1/11/09 10:38 pm, Blogger Matron said...

They look brilliant, and quite clean and unblemished.

 
At 1/11/09 11:25 pm, Blogger lilymarlene said...

Had some for dinner tonight...they were very tasty!

 
At 2/11/09 10:17 am, Anonymous Riverswamp said...

Excellent crop!!!!!

 
At 10/11/09 12:45 pm, Blogger Rob Clack said...

I'd never heard of Christmas potatoes until too late, and my order missed the deadline. I'll do it next year.

We grew potatoes in 5 50-litre compost bags and got a good crop, though didn't know we needed to use main crops to take advantage of continuous earthing up. Still, lovely to be able to lift the spuds just by diving hands into the compost!

 

Post a Comment

<< Home