Getting the Potatoes Down Before St. Patrick’s Day
March 12, 2009
They say in Ireland to get yer potatoes in the ground by St. Patrick’s Day so I’ve put down two types of potato in the trough I built a few days ago on the balcony.
I hadn’t provided space in the masterplan for the potato trough but was able to squeeze it in opposite the bean trellises.
Chitting
The two potatoes I am planting are pentland javelin, which are first earlies, and charlotte, which are salad potatoes, both courtesy of B&Q. I have been chitting them for the last few weeks. For those not in the know, “chitting” is simply the process of encouraging sprouts to grow from the eyes of the potatoes before actually planting them. I did this by keeping them in egg boxes in the study which is quite a cool room with a medium amount of light.
The charlotte potatoes have blackish sprouts about 2-3 cm long. The javelins have much longer white sprouts – about 6-8cm. I’m not an expert on this but I suspect they are different in color and length as we kept the javelins in the dark for longer before moving them to the study. Since moving them to the windowsill they are now a little greener.
Pentland javelins chitting:
Charlottes chitting:
In order to prevent too dense a growth, I left no more than two sprouts on each potato, slicing off the rest:
In order to prevent too dense a growth, I left no more than two sprouts on each potato, slicing off the rest:
The Planting Procedure
- Fill trough (bucket, pot, container, tub, barrel etc) about one third full of compost (or leave it 2/3 empty if you are that way inclined)
- Place potatoes on top of the compost, spouts facing up. Make sure they are not too close to the side and about 10cm apart.
- Cover with compost so the potatoes are now about 5 cm below the surface.
- As the sprouts grow, add more compost, analogous to the way that traditional gardeners and farmers “hill” potatoes by building up soil around the plant. This encourages as much potato yield as possible per plant by maximising the length of the plant underground.
More on hilling and harvesting when the time comes – Happy Patrick’s Day!
7 Responses
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Nice stubs on the Charlottes, the Pentland javelins look to be streaching for the light though. No big worries, at least you did not have a rat attack like one of our members over on the Irish gardeners forum :0 ….. http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7184#7184
Yikes! It looks like being a few stories up can have its advantages! I don’t want to speak too soon though.
You look to have good early pops on the balcony. My Charlottes have also a small dark sprout but are very slow. i have some volunteer ones on the plot already so will see how they go. I think James is referring to my seed disaster on on irish gardeners forum!
Sorry to hear about the seed disaster – you should be alright though it’s still early enough!
Tis but a minor setback Peggy
Fantastic
[...] over a month ago, I posted about building a trough and planting potatoes. As I mentioned then, keeping the potatoes topped up with compost encourages maximum underground [...]