The Johnstown Times - Grow Spuds

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September Edition 2017

Grow New Year’s Day Potatoes?

It’s a popular media article at this time of year where this annual challenge is posed for growing your Christmas dinner vegetables. If you’re planning to have potatoes you really can.

Realistically New Year’s Day dinner is more achievable however you still have to act now since potatoes take 3 months to mature to decent size….. and time is ticking down to the big day!

Why Bother?

Simply taste the difference of home grown food and you’ll understand. You’ll also savour the satisfaction of having grown them yourself and it also makes for a great dinner conversation.

Are you likely to succeed?

Irish weather is great for traditional crops since most of what we grow does well in cool weather and is not suited to Tropical or Mediterranean climates.

If you do the basics now then only the weather is a concern since it takes 11 weeks to produce small spuds.

Some good news is that it’s the end of the season and grow bags and compost are usually on sale.

The bad news is that if you wanted to grow anything else you’re out of time and the season is against you. You’ll also need to shop around very quickly to buy seed potatoes.

Wet warm weather also encourages potatoe blight which will ruin crops but given the minimum effort and cost required it’s still worth the challenge.

What you’ll need:

Space.

Potatoes need vertical space but the leaves don't spread out much beyond the width of the base.

The potatoe tubers grow bunched around the planted seed level so the trick to get more is to regularly bury the plant with only a few inches of leaf showing at the top.

You'll need a bag of compost per plant until it reaches the top of the pot or a reasonable depth pilled at the sides if you're growing it in the ground.

Grown in containers they're easy to move.

Seed Potatoes

These aren’t tiny seeds in a packet and they are better described as miniature potatoes with many varieties available but only 2 types:

‘Early Crops’ are planted at the start of the year
‘Second / Main Crops’ planted up until late summer.

Avoid re-planting potatoes that were grown the same year since they need to have had a dormant period to sprout healthy roots.

for the best chance of success track down any of these varieties:

‘Carlingford'
'Charlotte'
'Maris Peer'
'Nicola'
‘Orla’

What to do

Seeds.

Buy the seed potatoes now before they’re out of stock and whilst the soil is sufficiently warm so they’ll sprout in the ground. This is unlike Early crops which need ‘chitting’ and the forced sprouting of roots before planting.

You don’t need an allotment garden unless you have the space since you only need a container 30cm wide and twice as high for one plant to produce a dozen spuds. A trash can will be enough for 4 plants and enough for a dinner with guests.

Planting.

Containers or pots are by far the easiest to manage since they’re above ground, can be moved to warm sunny spots and sheltered from heavy rain or frost with sheets, cardboard or bubble wrap. If you have a greenhouse or conservatory you’ve got a much easier task.

Containers need more watering and feeding compared to ground planting but won’t be prone to waterlogging or frost.

For the container create a base 10cm deep with compost, place the seed potatoes in and cover with another 10cm. As the plant grows 10cm cover it again and then again until the top of the pot is reached.

For ground planting they should go in 30cm apart and cover the plant once the stems reach 20cm, afterwards draw in soil from the sides as they grow to provide growing room for the potatoes.

Grown in the ground and earthed up at the sides.

Harvesting

If the weather’s been kind then within 3 months the leaves turn yellow and it’s time to unearth the crop. Note: don’t eat green potatoes!

For containers simply upturning the pot, tip out the earth and pull apart the soil to reveal the spuds.

Removing from the ground is more tricky and I usually just use my hands since I always end up spearing one or two spuds with the fork. Unlike the container method it’s inevitable that you’ll miss a few which will sprout next year to remind you that you missed them!

If your crop is ready far too early simply leave them in the soil untouched. Revealing your spuds before the big day still allows you to store them unwashed in coarse dry sand or a layer of cool dry soil.

Frost and waterlogging will damage them so watch out.

That’s it – Try it.

Other things to grow

It's too late to plant most other 'over wintering' crops but as every good gardener knows its now the 'soil's season'. This means that it's time to prepare next seasons growing areas for winter by digging in manure and green coverings to ensure their ready for early spring planting.

Salads and herbs still do well outside and when the weather gets too cold put them on a sunny window sill.

Garlic should be planted outside a few weeks before the frost and each bulb will happily produce a new crop early in March.