I would like to grow the perfect spud :)

I would love to grow decent potatoes. I found a garden center that sold King Edwards here in Italy. The potatoes here are not very good, there's no such thing as a baked potato, it's just something they have no interest in. However, i love decent spuds, roasted or baked so when i found a garden center that sold King Edwards i bought myself a packet of King Edwards seed potatoes, 10 in a packet. I followed the instructions, 4" deep and 4" apart. When it came to harvest them, i got around 15 small potatoes, half of them had been eaten through. So i never managed to get that baked potato
I went on Youtube and saw that a couple of the gardeners who had posted their videos were adding soil as the shoot was growing, when they harvested their crop, they were pulling out potatoes at different levels. The instructions on my seed potato packet never mentioned this way of growing
There was another guy who prepped the soil before planting his potatoes by adding lime to the soil then digging a deep trench to lay the potatoes in. I think it was meant to keep insects from attacking the crop. But he never added soil as the shoots appeared.
Can someone advise me the best way to grow potatoes, mainly King Edwards? Thanks

 

JohnD,how I grow my potatoes, I first try to get my patch ready buy rough digging and leaving to weather over winter when it is ready to get on the plot in spring I try to dig over again,then when I think it is safe to start planting dig over again but this time I plant the potatoes in rows about 30 ins apart with the seed potatoe 15ins apart in the row,they are also set at about fork depth in the trench (6 to 7ins deep I also through in chicken pellet manure at 1 handful per yard.When the potatoes are 6 to 9 ins high I start to pull soil up to them with another sprinkling of chicken pellets for added feed,I do this twice and then leave until ready to harvest as new potato. Main crop I do just the same way but leave them until the tops start to die back, then I dig them out first thing on a nice sunny morning leaving them laid on top of the soil to dry and them bag them up later in the day.I never put lime on or in the trench as this can cause the crop be scabby. I hope you find this helpful.

 

Thanks Fileyboy. It was very helpful indeed Btw, do you take preventative measures against insects or worms that attack the crop? I had this problem with half my crop. It looked like large worm holes

 

The best crop of spuds I ever saw, grew in pretty much nothing but horse manure. Literally, we had a massive stack of the stuff from cleaning out the stables and we needed rid of it, so we just dug it in. There was still loads left, so we just spread it out, and then planted straight into it. You said in another thread that you have access to plenty of horse poo.

 

Lime will encourage scab as Filey said. The holes were probably caused by black keeled slugs, a right pain in the bottom

You can use neamatodes against them

You do need to earth the haulms up as they grow

 

Thanks again. Yes clueless i can access horse manure. Thanks Zigs, i had to look up the word Haulms, i've never heard that terminology before

 

I would never go shallower than 12" deep, especially for King Edwards as it's maincrop. 4" can't be right?!

 

Hiya John.
Going on reports by members here, King Edwards aren't the best of croppers. King Edward is a maincrop which are produced later in the season. For this reason, I haven't grown many as my space was limited so I concentrated on the much tastier (and more expensive in the shops) early varieties, so I can't really suggest a maincrop variety. Over here, we 'earth up' for two reasons, the main one being to keep off the frost, but also to increase crop yield. As already indicated, you need to plant much further apart. Regarding Lime, I don't get that, as it's always been my understanding that spuds hate lime. Anyway, my advice FWIW, plenty of humus before you plant, and plenty of water when it's dry

 

Thanks guys for taking the time to respond

 

Thanks shiney, I do like my roast spuds

 

Best roasties are made with smaller new spuds, roasted in with a bit of olive oil, salt and finely chopped rosemary

 

King Edwards are not the best for Baking potatoes as many of them will not reach a good size, however, they do make the best Roastie, bar none. But if you have supply issues for the seed potato, you have to use what you have available.

I dig a trench out following a string line (set high above the ground) to get it straight, and it is dug one spade deep (9 inches), a couple of inches of well rotted manure (black and crumbly) go in the bottom of the trench along with a handful of Fish Blood and Bone for every 6-7 foot of trench, this is lightly forked over (mixed) and the seed potatoes placed as below. A few *slug pellets* are sprinkled on and the trench is filled in.

Now I earth up, yes I do this before the plants show above the ground to help avoid late frosts and it makes my potato bed work free until harvest time. I earth up as high as I can get it, 12 to 15 inches following the previously high set stringline. I will water well now, sprinkling the ridges so as not to destroy them and drowning the valleys and I probably will not water again.

We are on a clay loam soil here so it holds water well, and I am in the lake district so we get reasonable rainfall to make those lakes. Even in very dry spells I can dig down a couple of inches and find moist soil and its by doing this that I judge if they need watering.

First earlies: Plant 12 inches apart in rows 12 inches apart. You wont get much of a earthed up ridge on these due to how close they are planted. 12 weeks (3 calender months) in the ground and they are done, you can start looking and possibly harvesting at 10 weeks

Second earlies: Plant 15 inches apart in rows 15 inches apart. These will earth up a bit higher and are ready after 16 weeks (4 calender months).

Main crop: Plant 20-24 inches apart in rows 24 inches apart. These will be ready when the haulms are dieing back.

I always start harvesting first ealies before they have flowered at around 10 weeks, I will either have a little furtle around the base of the plant carefully pulling away the soil to see what is there or just dig one haulm up to see, if there is nothing there I will look again in a weeks time. Main harvest of all the spuds is after they have flowered. Maincrops I will leave until the haulms are dieing back.

My Calender: A rough guide.

End of March, ALL potatoes are planted in one day or over two.
End of June, first ealies ready.
End of July, second earlies ready.
End of August, Maincrop ready.

I feed bi-weekly with homemade Comfrey tea.

At the start of June I water the whole crop with Nematodes (at the base of the plant, NOT over the top of them) and start to apply organic *slug pellets*.

There are many different ways to grow potatoes and every single gardener will do it differently, this is what works for me and gives me a well protected (from weather and bugs) and a very well fertilised crop, with the added bonus of not having to pay them much attention whilst they are growing.

As for varieties to try, Cara are a variety you will find in the shops here in the UK sold as bakers, they grew poorly for me this year. Another worth a try are Rocket a first early, these grow quite big and are ready in 10 weeks.

Some of our King Edward crop from this year, now in storage. Mug for a sense of scale.



*Slug pellets* When planting the seed potatoes I have learned to use 2 or 3 pellets per potato, this attracts and kills the slug, use anymore and it just deters them away somewhere else. The same applies to when I use them later in the season above ground, just 2 or 3 per plant is enough, every couple of days.

Steve...

 

Agree x 20!!!!!

I like cooking; Mr "M" likes shopping (mad fool!) and he is always instructed to get KE for our roasties.

For jacket potatoes, a good Maris Piper can be excellent - the trick is to get a potato which will crisp up on the outside while turning the inside into a fluffy mush of white goodness which doesn't need to be mashed to be mushed (if you see what I mean ); Maris Pipers do that when used as a Jacket Potato. King Edwards do that when roasted *insert drooling smilie*

Must be quite a challenge trying to grow in Italy when your seasons/temps can vary quite a bit from your home world? Keep trying ... you will find a way which suits your needs and your environment Where there is a will, there is a way

 

Wow thanks Steve for that detailed explanation. It was kind of you to take the time
Thanks 'M' I'm guessing that the best time for me to plant here would be around spring time, which is pretty much equivalent to a mild English summer. As we head towards summer the temp will slowly climb to around mid 30's. By that time i'm guessing the spuds will have been out of the ground and found a home in my stomach
I would really like to make this work as the potatoes here are very poor for roasting and baked potatoes are non existent. They seem to hold a lot of water no mater what you do. Mash potatoes here are almost runny and liquefied. It's difficult to get used to