Early Potatoes

[pigletwillie]

Surely Early potatoes are harvested before the flowers can be an issueso why bother?

[poultrychat]

Yes -it's what I was told by an old farm hand! Think I have read it too a good while back......just never tried it myself as we always grow far too many spuds. I'd like to have it confirmed by someone else though before you do it !!!! Why not try a few plants and see??
Seaweed feed is also supposed to increase yields by up to 40% too.
Full of Trivial Persuit info today!!!!

Nah Nicos, it would be good to have someone to blame a bad crop on

Thinking about it though as with earlies you can pick them once the flowers open then surely the flower heads aren't on the plant for long enough for them to really make a difference?

[poultrychat]

I have read it aswell but the potatoes flowering and then dying is my way of knowing when they are ready.

That's only for maincrop isn't it LJ, on earlies I thought you could pick them once the flowers opened whereas on maincrop you are meant to leave them until the flowers have died off the the plants are on their way out too?

[Lesley Jay]

You can dig up your potatoes when you want to really. I wait for the flowers to die and the leaves to start dying before we begin digging them up. This goes for the earlies aswell. We only dig up what we want and leave the rest in the ground, so by the time we get to the end of the row the plants are dead. It's the way I have always done it.

[Cerinthe]

The only reason I wondered about it is because they haven't been growing for long, I think they have only been in 6-7 weeks and the growth isn't that tall yet. If they had been a foot high it wouldn't have bothered me, but flowers on such young and low growth seems odd. I thought that by leaving the flowers on to develop it might stunt the growth as its so early in their growing time, if you see what i mean.

[Nicos]

What I like about charlotte potatoes is that we start digging them up when a little bigger than cherries and finish when they are as big as decent jacket spuds ( unless the blight gets stuck in and then they are all chopped back to soil level and dug up soon afterwards) When they flower has no influence on us for that particular variety!!