My spud, erm, 'harvest'

[piskieinboots]

well Grapes - there are some excellent harvests above - well done you lot and please share what you did to save me from Waitrose next year

[Snadger]

Commercial growers do spray with paraquat (normally referred to as PDQ) but not for the reason given. The crop is sprayed approx 7 days after planting and the idea is to kill any weed growth before the canopy of the potato plants is sufficient to smother weed growth.

Well you live and learn! I always thought they sprayed the tops with sulphuric acid for a similar reason to what Alice mentioned!

[sewer rat]

I'm still a week at the earliest from lifting my tatties. Have lifted some Charlotte for "too impatient to wait" customers but largest tubers are only egg sized and majority are still too small. All I want is some good rain over the next few weeks to help the tubers swell. (Rain forecast up here for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday )

[sewer rat]

Well you live and learn! I always thought they sprayed the tops with sulphuric acid for a similar reason to what Alice mentioned!

And for my next lesson
The tops are sprayed with sulphuric acid to kill the haulms completely before the harvesters go in - nothing to do with blight control. Sulphuric Acid is being phased out courtesy of the EU, leaving the big boys the option of a new spray called Reglone, or the slightly more traditional method of chopping the haulms to shreds with a flail mower.

[Snadger]

Ah, well as I said, you live and learn! Thanks for the farming methods lesson SW!

[quark1]

I had a fertle down to where I could feel a bulge on one of my Salad Blues last week and took out one the size of a golf ball. Definitely too small to tip out the whole lot. I'm going to wait at least another 2-3 weeks and water well before I try and lift any others.

Single seed grown in flower bucket.

The experience however of microwaving this single tiddler - as a baked - was interesting to say the least. I overdid it slightly - well it is difficult to judge a single weeny spud. Flavour not bad - but eating a spud the colour of gentian blue was really very, very strange!

I shall try the red ones also next year and do a red, white and blue potato salad to represent Britain!

[piskieinboots]

nice one quark - coloured spuds

the last (first and only) time I have eaten coloured spuds was on an internal US flight with Jet Blue - they served out blue 'corporate' crisps......da ya just love the 'Mercans

[Cutecumber]

I grow spuds entirely in containers and have been experimenting for some years now.

I find the new potato bags (mine are the dark green cylindrical Haxnicks ones) to be very good - my harvests are bigger than in similar capacity pots, interestingly.

I would offer the following tips to those of you who seem to be having low yield issues
(in pots, that is)...

Growing in a container gives you the opportunity to give potatoes really great growing media - and they'll need it because there is limited space. So, don't skimp on the compost.

Don't cram in too many seed potatoes - it defeats the object as there's not enough food and water to go round.

Watering - you can't overwater a potato in a container. Really. They drink it like it's going out of fashion. Even when it runs through, keep watering - slow and gentle, but lots of it. When you tip the contents out it will be fairly, if not completely, dry.

Do keep topping up regularly - with a good deep container, make sure you fill it up regularly as the foliage grows. Tubers form immediately on or from the stem and covering them will stimulate this.

Don't harvest too early - ignore the flowering, consider how long they have been planted but basically get your hand in. Try hard to leave them a little longer!

If you are having problems growing in the ground then most of this still applies - good soil, plenty of water, and patience!

[piskieinboots]

what excellent tips CC - I'm pretty sure I didn't water nearly enough even though our lovely MOM (shirley) kept telling us to

How's ya parsnips?
*ducks

[terrier]

I was hoping to leave the potted spuds a little longer but the high winds last week did quite a lot of damage with some of the pots being completely defoliated. So I harvested the first pot a couple of days ago. Plenty of potatoes in there but all with 'hollow heart' so just chucked most of them away. Probably caused through irregular watering. Cutecumber's right, you can't water too much.