Potatoes... They are in.
With a glorious spring day available to me, I decided to bite the bullet and get my potatoes in their bags.
According to my wall chart I am a tiny tap early for these. The variety is Charlottes and they are a second early. That means they usually go in around early to mid April. I'm actually planting these as if they were first earlies. Is that going to bite me in the ass? Possibly... But where they are is well protected from the winds and they get lots of sunshine to stay warm. In other words... I am hedging my bets!
As you can see at the top of the post, the seed potatoes had some good eyes on them. Most only had one sprout, but that is fine. All of them had lots of root sproutings on the eyes, a few even had the beginnings of leaves growing on them!
This isn't a problem so much. The leaves will die off and the stems will continue to grow. This just proves that they are good and strong.
Before I put in the potatoes I mixed in some fertiliser. This is a slow release general use fertiliser (N.P.K = 4.4.4)... I could have gone with a potato one, but I also wanted something for my beds... Meh. B-)
I went under the recommended amounts and only used 5g per bag...
Speaking of bags...
As you can see they are not huge, hence only a small amount of fertiliser needed. BTW, the one bag is unrolled so you get a proper idea of how big they get. I can easily get 5+ pounds (2.2+ kgs) of potatoes per bag.
In each bag I put 3 tubers. When they start to grow I will be mounding up by using fresh soil. The soil that is in there is a mix of some of the soil from last year and a bit of mushroom compost I got from work. Loverly stuff!!
I think the next job will be onions.
#gardening #horticulture #potatoes #potato #GYO #growyourown