Advice on which potatoes to plant when to get a continuous crop?

[nick the grief]

I usually bung all mine in at the same time Bramble, the earlies take less time than the maincrop to mature anyway.

[bramble]

Right, thanks for that, will bung them all in now and see what happens. Thanks.

[Ratty]

Successional cropping

Hi all...

I've just got myself 3kg of Charlotte seed potatoes to plant in buckets - I was hoping that if I stick a couple in a bucket every week I would have a continuous supply of salad potatoes throughout the summer.

So my questions are...

Will this plan work work?

Where can I keep the seed potatoes that I've not yet planted?

Any other advice??

Cheers,

John

[rotorvator]

Hi Ratty,

I tried exactly that with some success last year the only trouble i had was that i only had 3 planters so my i had a bit of a gap between harvesting the last of the three and the next (previously harvested one) being ready. So im going to try it this year with some more planters.

I used Charlotte potatoes also and i planted them every 3 weeks. The extra potatoes i just kept in the shed they seemed to keep ok.

[Ratty]

Thanks Rotovator... can't wait to start now... might do the first bucket this weekend and put it in the greenhouse!

[Wendy]

Eskymo,

This is not quite as simple a question to answer as it may seem but here goes:

Potatoes generally fall into 4 groups, FIRST EARLY, plant late March & harvest mide June to July; SECOND EARLY, plant early April & harvest July - August; Early Maincrop, plant mid April & harvest late August - October; LATE MAINCROP, plant mid April and harvest late August - October.

eg (popular) First Early potaoes: Rocket, Swift, Maris Baird, Arran Pilot, Foremost etc. should be planted late March. The haulms (leaves) will need protection from frost. They will be ready about 10 weeks from planting. You know your area better than me so can guage this. If growing in pots you can start them off under cover in greenhouse or similar if needed.

Maybe the best place to start in choosing a potatoe is why you want to grow them? Do you prefer roast, mash, chips, boiled, salad or just a general all purpose one! Looloo rightly pointed you to Edwin Tuckers site as this list a lot of varieties by 'usage'. Most people may then select a variety if they need it to be pest or disease resistant eg to combat blight or slugs or eelworm etc.

So you may decide you want an early potatoe, white in colour, to enjoy as a salad potato which has good eelworm resistance......choose Rocket.

I have had fresh potatoes from late May untill Christmas.....with stored potatoes making up the gap Jan - May.

If this is your first year and you have nobody to ask about problems, eg is blight a factor, I would grow, first earlies & late maincrop. If you have more room grow second earlies or salad types. If you want the fullhouse then go for early maincrop.


Hope this helps, I assume you are ok with chitting or not as the case my be etc. Anybody any other questions please ask!

Thanks Eskymo for asking those questions i was just about to post a similar thread , i have too just started growing potatoes i have 3 big buckets of pentland javelin at the moment and was just wondering how to keep myself in spuds all year round.
So thanks Geordie and others for these very useful and informative replies