Grow Potatoes

Growing potatoes is very easy and often a nice way to break up soil and many people overlook this and are frightened at the prospect of growing potatoes due to the preparation and language used and in reality it is so simple anyone can do it with little more than some time as potatoes are so versatile a crop which can be stored for prolonged periods and used in many ways.
You begin with your potatoes and you keep some of these back for seed for your next crop and around the end of January through February you chit them and this is often the first hurdle as chitting is little more than starting the seed potato off and this simple process virtually guarantees success and at the very least it improves your yield. Do you need to chit your seed potatoes? No as commercial growers don’t as they don’t have the time and space to chit them, but for a home grower it is preferred, especially if you grow in containers or a limited space where every ounce of yield counts.

You select your potatoes for seed and first is size and too big a seed potato means many smaller potatoes are produced and if you go for a seed potato the size of a large egg you will get fewer potatoes but they will be much larger and often more useful. Now you have selected your size you look to chit them and chitting is the process of starting potatoes off and chitting is the production of shoots; can you chit green potatoes? YES as potatoes are tubers and one seed potato produces lots of new tubers and they won’t be green; you cannot eat green potatoes and should not.
To chit you select a tray to hold your seed potatoes and you can use other things such as old egg boxes and you look at each potato and place it in the container with the eyes facing upwards and you need to put them somewhere at around 10-15°C and with plenty of light. If your potatoes are too large you take your chitted potato and cut them in half, lengthways, for unchitted potatoes you cut them in half also ensuring you have eyes on both halves.

[b]I have potatoes at home in a cool, dark cupboard and they have sprouted and produced long white sprouts so are these chitted and can I use them? They are not chitted and actually you can still use them if you act quickly as the tubers efforts are going into producing these worthless shoots and wasting their energy which would be better spend producing the correct shoots. What they are doing is actually what comes naturally to most plants and that is to reproduce and these sprouts are doing nothing more than looking for light and as they find none they keep growing hoping to find some and hence the reason their shoots are long, spindly, and white.
If you intend chitting them you rub the shoots off and place them into trays with the sprouted end facing upwards and chit normally by putting them in an appropriate temperature with lots of light.
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Chitting takes around 6 weeks and you can already see them sprouting and unlike the spindly sprouts they will have much shorter and sturdy sprouts and they will not be white and you can now prepare your growing medium.
Potatoes like lots of well rotted muck and of you are planting into the ground you prepare the ground in advance by adding a lot of well rotted muck and dig it in at the end of the previous growing season and leave it over winter. If you are growing in raised beds or in pots and containers in compost then you can add up to about 1/3rd of well rotted muck to your compost before planting your seed potatoes.

You have three stages of cropping and they are:

Early season – these are the earliest potatoes and generally smaller and often include salad or new potatoes and are planted and harvested first and take around 10 weeks from planting to harvesting

Mid season- these are planted slightly later than early season potatoes and are slightly larger and generally take around 12 weeks from planting to harvesting and are generally a good intermediate potato.

Main crop – these are the main crop of potatoes and generally require more room if planted in the ground and you increase the spacing’s to 18” (450mm) between plants and between rows as these take between 14 – 20 weeks from planting to harvesting and produce the largest potatoes and often the most useful.

For planting in the ground you dig a small hole and insert the chitted potato with the sprouted end upwards and cover with about 4” (100mm) of soil, or you can just cover with well rotted muck and space them with 12” (300mm) between the plants and 12” (300mm) between the rows for early crops and 18” between them for later crops. When the tops form and grow higher you can row them up by covering part of the top in soil and you increase their watering as like all tubers they require a lot of water, but not too much.

For container planting I will use a standard builders bucket for this example, but you apply the same principles to whichever container you use, ensure the bucket had adequate drainage holes and half fill the bucket with compost or compost mixed with well rotted muck and put three chitted potato seeds in the bucket with their sprouted ends facing upwards and fill the bucket nearly to the top with compost or compost mixture.

Now a little more useful knowledge and this is there are two classifications of potatoes and this is how they produce their crop and they are known as “determinate” and “indeterminate” and we really need to know this as we can use this information to our advantage.

Determinate potatoes produce potatoes at one level and that level is the same as the seed potato and for containers these are the best kind as we can employ another trick to increase our yield.

Indeterminate potatoes grow new potatoes at different levels and these are both at a higher and lower level than the seed potato, basically 3D growing.

Determinate potatoes planted in the ground don’t need the ground raking up around the tops and for container growing this is an additional benefit, and now for the little trick; if we use the standard 30 litre container instead of a bucket we can employ a technique called layering and this is simplicity itself, we fill the bucket to around 1/3rd height and insert two seed potatoes and cover them to around 2/3rds high and put two more seed potatoes in and we now have two layers of potatoes. This gives us twice the potato yield for little more work.

Indeterminate potatoes are better grown in the ground as the additional space for main crop potatoes means they have more space side to side to grow and more upper and lower space to grow and this additional growing time means the crop is larger and with larger potatoes
Picking and storing potatoes is a necessity and before we pick them we need to know about storage and potatoes with a thicker skin actually are better for storing so we thicken their skins by reducing or stopping watering them all together 3 weeks before we pick them as this hardens their skins in readiness for storing.

What is the best system for growing? For a beginner I would suggest a mixture of container and in ground growing as the containers give an early crop up to a month before the mid crop and up to a couple of months before your main crop; in addition to this you can move your containers to avoid the inevitable UK frosts we will get for the first crop. Potatoes don’t like frosts and in the event of a potential frost you move your potatoes inside and if you have a cold frame or greenhouse you can use these for mild frosts, or you can simply cover the container with gardeners fleece and insulate the container with straw to keep heat in the soil. For more severe frosts you can move the containers into a greenhouse and light the fire and you just need to keep the containers frost free, and in either event you need lots of light. Chitting correctly and container growing will often see your first potatoes harvested 2 weeks earlier than normal and you are using your potatoes two weeks earlier and prolonging their growing season which smoothes the transition into the mid season crop as you use some of your early crop and have more storage space for the mid season crop to tide you over to your main crop.

Storing your harvested potatoes needs to be done in a cool and dark place and correctly storing your potato crop will see you well into the winter and you do this normally by hanging and you can fill the plastic mesh bags and hang them or you can use the hessian sacks instead. Air circulation is a necessity and keeping them off the ground keeps the ground dwellers off your stored potatoes and prevents them eating them as a free meal and it is better to hang them in smaller quantities so if you get a bad potato and it turns the others around it, you minimise your losses.

Selecting your initial seed potatoes requires little more then establishing your growing method/methods and selecting either determinate or indeterminate types, them selecting the potato with the characteristics you require as some will be light and fluffy while others will be good for roasting and others will be good for chips, and others will be all round potatoes, if you buy some potatoes from the shop or supermarket you can also use them if you know the variety.
Buy at least three varieties so you cover all your bases and you can switch them between container and ground growing, and remember you seed them every year and only buy them once; some potatoes can or bottle better than others and some are resistant to certain diseases and the most common is potato blight which only happens at the end of summer, so it doesn’t apply to early crop potatoes. Be very careful selecting your initial seed potatoes and ensure they match your requirements and are suitable for your conditions.

Perfect timing, perfect post ..
I ordered 10kg of pink fir and blue annalise from the potatoe shop ..
A bit posh but I've plenty of sprouting white potatoes ..
Decided this after reading a bit recently ..
We are also stocking up on straw ready for next winter as Ireland are being told to put it back in to the ground to be " green" so there are now straw shortages ..
Shavings are already on short supply so more folk steam using straw .. which can also be used as feed if theres a shortage of hay .

Thank you so much again Assassin for dedicating some of your time to write great and beneficial articles.