Main crop potato harvest

[Vince G]

...is way too early, even for tropical East Anglia. I've lifted 5½ stone of Maris Pipers today, which was a bit disappointing as usually I'm not far off a hundredweight from four 20 foot rows. I left them as long as I could so every plant's leaves had lost every vestige of green and there are some big ones that I'd get 4 roasties out of, but on average I reckon they're 2½" in diameter.

I always plant on St Patricks Day so I remember my planting day. Is that a bit early maybe?

I think Plot 1 where I planted them this year might be a bit light on nutritents too.

[Penellype]

My Desiree potatoes at the allotment have finished and I am normally harvesting them into September, usually from planting in the last week of March. I note down the weight each year from 4 x 30 litre buckets (3 seed potatoes in each) at the allotment and this year was 11.4kg, which is about 1kg less than I would normally expect. At home the 3 buckets I have harvested so far have been bitterly disappointing. These usually do worse than the allotment ones as they are against a north facing wall, but I would normally expect about 1-1.5kg from each bucket, sometimes more This year so far I have had 0.65, 0.4 and 0.4kg. There was a similar story for the Lady C harvested earlier. I also grow each variety in a Quadgrow veg planter (4 18l pots on a self watering base, 1 potato to each pot). These often do better per potato than the buckets, presumably because there is more compost to each seed potato. The Lady C Quadgrow produced 3kg, the lowest yield I have had (previously very variable, 3.3 - 5.8kg), but the foliage was badly chewed by snails, which could account for it. The Desiree Quadgrow plants are still green.

There are various factors which could be responsible - we had very late frosts which could have checked growth (although the leaves didn't go brown). There was very little sunlight in spring - my solar panel generation was about 25% down on previous years, and this appears to have affected most crops that do much of their growing in spring (spinach, beetroot and onions were all poor). I am lazy with feeding, but I always put plenty of bfb in the buckets at planting time and I didn't do anything different this year. One thing that I do think could be partly responsible is potentially lack of water. We had a deluge, so I didn't do any watering and I think once the foliage was big enough to cover the buckets the water simply ran off and never reached the compost. This would not have affected the Quadgrow plants as the base was always full of water, so it will be interesting to see what the Quadgrow yield of Desiree looks like.

So my conclusion is that the very poor yields are a combination of late frost checking early growth, lack of sunlight resulting in poor leaf growth, snails further reducing leaf area in some cases and a potential lack of water. That's a pretty lethal combination if you are a frost-sensitive plant relying on sunlight for energy and water to produce nice big tubers and in hindsight I am not surprised yields were poor.

[Marb67]

My Satpol Mira (blight resistant) are still in a pot but the leaves are rapidly going downhill. Overnight. I just hope it isn't blight as I have been nurturing these for weeks

[Vince G]

My Desiree potatoes at the allotment have finished and I am normally harvesting them into September, usually from planting in the last week of March. I note down the weight each year from 4 x 30 litre buckets (3 seed potatoes in each) at the allotment and this year was 11.4kg, which is about 1kg less than I would normally expect. At home the 3 buckets I have harvested so far have been bitterly disappointing. These usually do worse than the allotment ones as they are against a north facing wall, but I would normally expect about 1-1.5kg from each bucket, sometimes more This year so far I have had 0.65, 0.4 and 0.4kg. There was a similar story for the Lady C harvested earlier. I also grow each variety in a Quadgrow veg planter (4 18l pots on a self watering base, 1 potato to each pot). These often do better per potato than the buckets, presumably because there is more compost to each seed potato. The Lady C Quadgrow produced 3kg, the lowest yield I have had (previously very variable, 3.3 - 5.8kg), but the foliage was badly chewed by snails, which could account for it. The Desiree Quadgrow plants are still green.

There are various factors which could be responsible - we had very late frosts which could have checked growth (although the leaves didn't go brown). There was very little sunlight in spring - my solar panel generation was about 25% down on previous years, and this appears to have affected most crops that do much of their growing in spring (spinach, beetroot and onions were all poor). I am lazy with feeding, but I always put plenty of bfb in the buckets at planting time and I didn't do anything different this year. One thing that I do think could be partly responsible is potentially lack of water. We had a deluge, so I didn't do any watering and I think once the foliage was big enough to cover the buckets the water simply ran off and never reached the compost. This would not have affected the Quadgrow plants as the base was always full of water, so it will be interesting to see what the Quadgrow yield of Desiree looks like.

So my conclusion is that the very poor yields are a combination of late frost checking early growth, lack of sunlight resulting in poor leaf growth, snails further reducing leaf area in some cases and a potential lack of water. That's a pretty lethal combination if you are a frost-sensitive plant relying on sunlight for energy and water to produce nice big tubers and in hindsight I am not surprised yields were poor.

An interesting summary. I don't have issues with late frosts or snails here, but it was dull and dry for much of spring by our usual standards in this part of the world. I can water more but not a great deal we can do abouth the dull weather. I had terrible onions and garlic this year too, I reckon those we picked will be used up in a month, whereas I was still eating last year's garlic this May.

I think lack of nutrients in my soil plays a part too though. My soil is very light and in hot weather if I water, it can sometimes just sit on the surface in blobs. After lifting the maris pipers I sowed mustard as that plot will be alliums next year, and will dig that in with some muck. I will be doing a lot of mucking this winter I think!

[peanut]

I've never grown main crops before but thought I'd give them a go this year, so I got a bag of Caledonian rose from DT Browns, about 14 seed potatoes.
Due to the haulms dying off after sixteen and a half weeks I decided to cut them off on 1st August, they'd flowered about a month earlier, so I figured they'd done all they were going to do anyway.

I mixed in some potato fertilizer when I planted them and earthed them with old compost and grass cuttings.
It had been pretty wet in June I think and I gave them a couple of token waterings in July but that was it.

I dug them up today, I'd planned to do it after two weeks, but, well, me and time aren't the best of friends!
I was really pleased with what I found! I got just over half a big tub trug full!

I've now weighed them and I have a total of 17.143kg.
Sadly out of that, 6.905kg have slug damage or I poked a fork through them
I'm not sure how that compares for a typical main crop harvest but I am really pleased, just a bit gutted I lef them in the ground for the slugs...

So I have 10.238kg of hopefully yummy Caledonian rose potaoes, to store along with my Nicola and Anya. All of which are now tucked up in old Amazon paper sacks.

These will last me forever!