My potatoes are growing really fast!!! Is this normal?

[Germinater]

I have potato sacks for mine .fantastic growth but I haven't botherd to earth up any further than about 10inches as I can't really see the point as you would not be able to earth up more than that if you was growing them in the ground ..

[Snadger]

I seem to remember reading (just in the last few days in actual fact, although I can't for the life of me remember where ) that ash is a good source of potash.

So, if that's true, if I take the fine ash from our wood burning stove (we light it using wood and then burn anthracite in it) and spread that around the base of my tatties and then water well, will that work ? I would rather recycle as much of the ash as I can, than put it in the general waste bin once cooled .

Reet
x

The downside of your proposal is that wood ash is also very alkaline (can be used instead of lime) so you could possibly finish up giving your potatoes scab?

[GlenAmple]

Yes, just leave them. The plants need green growth in good sunlight to form the sugars to expand the edible tubers and put taste into them.

You do not normally earth up by more than, say, 8 to 12 inches above the seed potato unless you have a fancy way of harvesting the potatoes from the bottom.

When using bags earthed up, the tubers at the bottom will be ready before those nearer the top have started growing properly. Harvesting from bags normally destroys the plant and so the top tubers remain too small to justify the extra earthing up. I guess you could get a few by furtling but I would struggle to clear all the tubers from the bottom of a 120 litre bag!!!!!!

There are some systems which have removable side slats so you can go into the bottom of the compost and remove those tubers without damaging the plant.



.

Furtling is how I harvested some of my potatoes last year and after the plants started to die back, I just cut back all the greenery and emptied the compost and potatoes out onto an opened up compost bag and harvested the rest of the potatoes that way getting about 2-3 lbs of potatoes per bag.

Thanks for all the help everyone, I'll just let the tatties get on with doing their thing now

[chris]

That's a shame - would have been great to find a use for the stuff, as we generate plenty of it Oh well, not to worry and thankyou.

Reet
x

I believe I read a post from Mikey about him growing spuds where an ash shed was (or something along thos elines) - he had his best spuds every - clean, bug/disease free, etc.. I'll see if I can find his post.

[chris]

I believe I read a post from Mikey about him growing spuds where an ash shed was (or something along thos elines) - he had his best spuds every - clean, bug/disease free, etc.. I'll see if I can find his post.

Found it.. http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...tml#post843026

May be worth a PM or similar to find out what exact ash mind..

[Germinater]

Think I will just stick to tomato feed it seems to work on most things