Main crop potato harvest

[lmayhow]

Come then lovely people help me out.... I have my main crop Maris Pipers to harvest as suggested by a fellow lottie chap I cut the 'bush' back now three weeks this coming saturday to cure skin.... what he did say to me was to not harvest to keep when wet....

But what does that mean? It can't rain the day or days before? Its a very wet September, how long do I wait before I give up and just do it, arrrrhhh first yeah growing spuds in the ground, can you tell

[veggiechicken]

Did he mean dry off the spuds, once lifted, before you store them? In other words don't store them wet.

[lmayhow]

No he was saying not to lift them when they are wet.... but by the sounds of it like you say not storing them wet is the main plan

[bario1]

I always dig mine on a sunny day and leave them out on the surface for a while to cure before they go into thick paper sacks.

[Vince G]

Been harvesting the Maris Pipers over the course of the last couple of weeks. Best way is to lift them in the morning and leave them on the soil, do some other jobs at the lottie, turn them at lunchtime then gather them up and stick them in a paper or hessian sack....

However we're all busy people. Just lift them, take them home and put them somewhere dark, like your garage for 24 hours until they're dried out and then bung in the sack.

[Cadalot]

OK I may be crazy but if I can I lift and rub off or brush off as much mud as possible and let them dry out before putting in a sack or container to bring home. Sometime I will was some and let them dry overnight and put into small sacks on the back of the shed door if they are going to be used straight away.

[Martin H]

Monty Don last night lifted some potatoes and said that because it was about to rain he'd let them dry out in his shed before putting them into sacks.

[1Bee]

It's NEVER dry, here. And because the potatoes come up stuck all over with clay soil (and if you try and rub it off it just smears everywhere, sticking your gloves together) I toss them into one of those flexible garden tubs with about 8 inches of water in the bottom. I harvest about three plants' worth, swirl the potatoes round and round , then rapidly tip the tub out onto some clean grass. If there's any likelihood of them drying in the time I have (hasn't happened once this harvest), I'll leave them there for a bit, then pick 'em up. At home, they get stored in newspaper lined and covered melon boxes.

Washing them may not cure them, or be a particularly good idea, but it means my harvest is more immediately usable, I can see any problem spuds I need to deal with, and when I wash them for eating, I don't plug up the sink...