Watering potatoes through plastic mulch

[andy armitage]

Hi all,

we're new to all this and are now thinking about planting after finishing making our raised beds. The question is we are thinking of growing our spuds
through a black plastic mulch as we are not quite sure how we are going to go about earthing them up because of the raised beds but if we do this how can we water them? I hope this doesn't seem like a daft question.

many thanks

Andy

[Shortie]

Hi Andy

I can't see why they won't grow, but what happens when you want to harveswt them - the black plastic will have to come up too (or did I read that wrong?)

[smallblueplanet]

Erm I thought I posted a reply once, but its not appeared - must be old age on my part!

Anyway, when I posted about plastic mulch not long ago someone told me to beware slugs under the plastic. I cn't see why you can't just grow them as 'normal' - we've grown spuds in raised beds, no problems.

[andy armitage]

Thanks that's great I think I will just have a go at doing them normally as sometimes trying to solve a problem, i.e avoiding earthing up can cause others like slugs that you mentioned. The trouble is there is so much advice in all these books I've got it's sometimes difficult to know what's the best thing to do

[SMS6]

I'm planning to plant my potatoes in a raised bed this year too. My plan is to lower the soil level a little then as the potatoes grow top it up again. In the same way that you use those potato sacks for growing.

[sewer rat]

I've grown tatties quite successfully in raised beds in my garden before. However, I do all my earthing up at planting time - too much else to do later in the year. And now I'm on a much bigger scale, my tatties still get earthed up at planting time - though I use a machine for this now.
As far as the black plastic mulch goes, I would earth up the rows to finished height then place black plastic on top of this.