First 'Bakers' - Suffering from lack of rain My (Kestrel) baking potatoes are rather on the small side this year: I think they suffered from the lack of rain despite me watering them. Perhaps if I up the watering my maincrop bakers will turn out as good as previous years:
Isn't it a bit early for maincrop? I thought the start of the school holidays marked harvest time. Have the tops died off?
They were the first ones planted (last week in March), the tops are starting to go and we need potatoes now. As I've got around 300 planted (getting 40 Sarpo Mira for £2 incl P&P from T&M + loads of free ones from Homebase doubled what I expected to plant), I made the decision to start harvesting slightly earlier than normal. Those spuds were from the bed planted fed with chicken poo, and if watered them more regularly I would have expected to get quite a few over 2lbs each, but there's still the Desirees in that bed with a while to go yet ....... The need for continual watering (I have to drive with a car full of water containers to where I grow) was a big factor in deciding to start lifting now, as I just haven't got the time to keep watering all my potato plants plus all the other stuff.
That is a real nuisance not having mains water at your plot Scrungee, knowing you I’m sure you’ve already thought through some of these ideas, but just in case… 1 ) If you have a tow bar and a trailer, you could make a bowser with an IBC. 2) If you have room for a couple of IBCs on your plot, then with a tarpaulin cover or similar you could catch enough over winter to last a few months. I’ve got two IBCs next to my veggie patch, it catches the rain off one half of my shed roof (which is 8 X 10ft), right now they are about half full (so 1000 litres still available). You could refill yours with the towed IBC every other week with a rigged up 12v pump (an old car petrol pump from the scrappie would do it). That's it for the off the cuff ideas, sorry if I'm teaching granny etc etc
My current vehicle doesn't have a tow bar and I sold my trailer last year, so I put 10 five gallon water containers in the car every time I drive past my plot (5 mins away) and do 2 drips in dry weather, so 100 galls/day, the equivalent of half a bowser full, which are emptied into water barrels (250 gallons capacity) and liquid feed tanks (200 gallons capacity). I can park near my barrels and have a stacks of pallets beside them where I put the containers on their sides to empty themselves whilst I get on with something else. A new tenant of a 40 pole plot was unsuccessful in bidding for one those bowsers on eBay, and I mentioned the tip of collecting water using a large sheet of polythene dpm. I have a structure with a corrugated iron roof of about 35m2 for collecting rainwater, but it soon goes. Somebody else made a water storage tank from an old metal heating oil tank that must have held about 3,000 litres, by cutting the top off and burning it out.
You have my admiration for your efforts there Scrungee That's some weight you lug about every day, 1/3rd of a ton every day when you make two trips!
Any chance of getting together & sinking a well ? We had one on one of our allotments, it was a godsend, unless you were a mouse, then it was a death sentence They used to plop as they got sucked thru the pump.:OUCH:
First 'Bakers' - Suffering from lack of rain I dug one many years ago, the depth of two oil metal oil drums (what I used to line it), but once it's empty it needs a thunderstorm (which never comes) to fill it up, or I can do a couple of runs with water containers to get just as much. I put some corbelled brickwork and a pcc slab over the top to keep the voles and rats out. P.S.Checking around the village today it seems as if all the second earlies have virtually finished regardless of whether they've been regularly watered or not.
