How many potatoes to grow?

[gardenpassion]

"Also, just for curiosity, why are you going to stagger main crop? Can understand earlies but main crop aren't eaten fresh and later plantings have a greater risk of blight. "


I think I meant that I am staggering them in as much as earlies/second earlies and main. am trying 3 different types to experiment with tastes and am hoping to use some from exhibition too. I reqret planting so few last year, so this year have 35 babies chitting away! the children have been warned not to pick the shoots off

[Two_Sheds]

I don't earth up

Me neither, I just mulch the plants with wet newspapers & grass clippings. Much easier to harvest, less digging, less weeding, less work all round, and the mulch goes back into the soil to improve it.

[sowitgrowit]

I only have 10 seed potatoes chitting away, to be grown in bags. I've never grown spuds before and have little space, so this is a bit of a trial run for me.

Incidenally the bags aren't compost bags as I've seen recommended, they're double-bagged courier's bags, which are around 14" x 24" when folded flat. I'm anticipating only one chitted potato in each when the time is right - does this sound right? They're probably around 10"-12" across when filled and "round" sat on the patio.

[Two_Sheds]

^ that sounds OK. It's better to give them more room than you think ~ if you squeeze them in, they'll just dry out quicker and produce a smaller crop.

What variety do you have?

[chris]

JBA have a spud calculator on their site, I use that to estimate how many I'd need..

[sowitgrowit]

^ that sounds OK. It's better to give them more room than you think ~ if you squeeze them in, they'll just dry out quicker and produce a smaller crop.

What variety do you have?

I've got "Kestrel" and "Nicola" - though I now understand I should have gone for two that explicitly said "First earlies" on them for container growing, though hopefully I'll have some success with what I've got. This is a first effort after all so I don't mind having a few failures, it'll give me a kick and make me do it better next time.

[RedThorn]

I never bothered with mains as space was limited at home. just 2nd earlies. Price of spuds versus the price of other crops and variety of other crops I could get out of the same space (and the fact that we were going through around the 15-20kg's of spuds a month....

Daughters fav thing was the 2nd earlies though