Planting out potatoes…

I normally plant my potatoes in these potato barrels but this year I have swapped to 3 large potato bags and some small black plastic potato exhibitor growing bags.  The large ones came with the growing selection I bought from Thompson and Morgan back in January (see here), in addition I bought some ‘Anya’ variety and the small growing bags.  The main problem with the normal barrels is that even though you can lift the sides to ‘grub’ out a few potatoes at a time, in the end you really have to take the lot out and it’s quite a few to eat in one go (the barrels take 5 seed potatoes each and they are best eaten as soon as possible although they do keep in the fridge).  In the grow bags I have just planted 3/4 per bag and then the small exhibitor bags have only 1 seed potato each, that way I figure I can harvest them one at a time, which should work out better.

As usual they are planted about 2 inches from the bottom and covered in soil (I use John Innes No 2), once they sprout I keep adding more soil to cover the stems of the leaves until the bag is full, then I will wait until they have flowered and eat them 🙂

And so, now all outside (please, no frost!!) I have

Charlotte – 3 in large growbag and 2 in small (They sent an extra potato by mistake)

Inca Bella –  5 in small growbags

Piccolo Star – 3 in a large growing bag and 2 in small bags

Anya – 4 in a large growbag and 1 in a small one

Lastly, I’ll put some organic slug pellets under the bags to keep the slugs at bay, even though I’ve used nematodes over the garden, just in case.