Potatoes - Advice on spacing for a newbie please!

[duggie]

Hi everyone,

This is my first year on the allotment and the first bed I have ready is where I want to plant potatoes. We are a family of 5 and use lots of spuds!

I am planning on planting my potatoes over the Easter break and would like advice on the spacing of potatoes. I have Rocket, International Kidney, Kestrel and then Desiree as the maincrop.

Do I need to make "furrows" for my spuds or should I dig a trench, plant them and then earth up? And what spacing should I use?

All advice very gratefully received

[royboy]

Im no expert, but I think they should be planted about 6" deep. 12" apart for earlies and 18" for maincrop. You start earthing up when the first shoots appear. Dont forget to add some organic matter and make sure the shoots are facing upwards....good luck.

[carlseawolf]

hi duggie, i,ve also got a big family and to keep you in potatoes all year you would have to plant up your whole plot leaving no room for anything else .
The normal reason to have an allotment is cheaper veg and certain things like spuds are already cheap so there is no point for the money saved as the ground could have more unusual veg with a higher price.
Take my plot i would get about 10 sacks of spuds at 6 pounds a bag so 60 pounds in value so minus the rent of 15 i have a profit of 45 pounds but if blight comes along and kills them all i get nothing apart from the hard work of digging them up and destroying them.
I'm not saying i don't do spuds but i have a few as the new taste is alot better than shop bought , but i mainly concentrate on a mixed bag of diffrent veg as old saying goes - don't put all your eggs in one basket.

[Snadger]

I agree with carlseawolf but to be honest I'm not a great fan of early potatoes and soon get sick of them! Against popular consensus I would always grow some maincrop as there's nothing quite like pulling Desiree for instance, 6 months after going into storage and when the shops have ran out of them, and making a big pan of mash or chips!

The secret I suppose, as carl says, is to grow a mixture of fresh veg which can be cropped throughout the year!

Tatties are in the ground from March/April to say September which means the plot is devoid of crops for half the year! Not good economic sense!

[Two_Sheds]

Agree with Snadger and Carlseawolf. If you plant loads of spuds, you're just bound to get blight and lose the lot
I like eating the first few new potatoes when they're a novelty, but I don't want them at every meal (and they don't store). Main crops are more welcome (and they do store), but are much more prone to blight (which comes around in late summer).

So, I'm going to plant just a few of each (Desiree, Pink Fir, Arran Pilot, Maris Peer, Charlotte) and see how they go.

[duggie]

Some of the old timers at our allotments advised us to put some potatoes in this year as the plot hasn't been worked for some years and that potatoes would help the break up the soil which is rather heavily clay. Once the early potatoes are out I plan to put sweetcorn in. Our plot is rather large too and will have room for peas, broad beans, runner beans, dwarf french beans, onions, shallots, salad leaves, cut flowers, courgettes and a poly tunnel (as yet still in the building stage). There will be room for one more bed when I've dug it which will be big enough for carrots, radish and beetroot.