no potatoes!!

[jennybain]

hi everyone. I have a couple of rows of Charlotte potatoes growing well in my garden and some of them appear to be ready to flower. When is it the best time to lift them?

This is the first time I have grown them in the ground rather than in pots and I thought they should be ready about now (planted late March). However, when I dug one up yesterday there were no potatoes....at all! plenty foliage and they look disease free, but no tubers. There are the signs of the tubers forming but they are really tiny.
Is it just too early to lift them or is there something drastically wrong??

[shirlthegirl43]

Earlies usually take around 12 weeks, if you planted late March then they probably still have a few weeks growing to do. Keep them well watered and the tubers should swell fairly quickly. If they are about to flower, it might be worth waiting for flowering to finish and then check again. I think everything in the ground is a bit slow this year as it was late getting warm.

[parrot1974]

Agree with Shirley. Mine are in flower at the moment and have read that it's best to wait at least 2 weeks from then to get good crop. Longer you can wait the better (within reason!). Having picked all my broad beans a bit early (couldn't wait!), am determined to wait for my potatoes!

[jennybain]

Thanks for that! I will just have to be patient then.

Relieved that I am not doing anything wrong!

[Two_Sheds]

How many threads are we going to have on this same topic?
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...hen_18710.html
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...oes_17461.html

[parrot1974]

As with all things in the garden, surely better to have too many than not enough...lol.

[ski_tzo]

Hey i ahve read all these potatoe threads with interest. i am an amature and i potted up some (tesco value) potatoes that had began to sprout, after a couple weeks they all had large shoots so i planted them. now they look as if they about to flower. Am i going to run into problems because I didnt use seed pots from the garden centre and what does blight look like?

[snohare]

You'll know blight by the smell, ski_tzo, if it has reached the tubers then they will really stink. Other wise, brown blotches on the haulms, slimy black mess of foliage...but you can usually see it coming by the weather, it requires high temperatures and high humidity for a certain period of time to allow the spores to develop.
http://http://www.blightwatch.co.uk/...t/bw-Smith.asp
The disadvantage of using supermarket potatoes is that they are not certified disease free, so they may have viruses, scab etc. Not neccesarily serious, but as they all affect yields or crop quality, and may stay in the soil, you can see that the cumulative effect of everyone using Tesco tatties could be dire.
Me, I've used Asda this year. (Hadn't enough money for seed tatties when I wanted to plant 'em - now I'm up to my eyes in certified seed tatties that a commercial grower gave me, and paranoid about were they healthy. )

[parrot1974]

Last year I used the Rooster potatoes from Morrisons, which were fantastic, but I grew them in pots so didn't suffer any problems. We had loads from them. This year have used seed potatoes and it's not as impressive!