Little hands make great potatoes

This week we saved our potato harvesting, patiently waiting for our grandsons to come over. I underestimated just how much fun it is digging up and finding those little golden nuggets in the veg bed. We all had fun digging around finding them, from the tiniest ones to the potential big baking ones. It was amazing to see how excited the children were in the garden. Campbell and I loved watching them. There were so many harvested, we had plenty to round and as they say, sharing is caring 😊

 Potatoes are so simple to grow and only need a little space.
We grow them both in veg beds and in bags. You can buy potato bags from the garden centre, but you can also use any kind of bag (even old ones from the supermarket, we are even re-using empty compost bags for them).

Veg beds are easy too. We sit the bed on the ground (no digging required), put a layer of cardboard, then larger sticks and old leaves etc, upside down turf etc and then start to add compost (manure etc) to fill it.
Once filled, I plant each chitted potato (get these from the garden centre) deep enough to bury it (approx 30cm apart), cover and water. We let the rain do most of the watering but if it is dry for a few days we water (making sure to water quite deeply for a few minutes) and once a week we give the potatoes a feed supplement (you can buy this at the garden centre, mix with water in a watering can and off you go).

When the plants start to show, pull the earth up around them to keep the light out. This is called earthing up (it stops your potatoes from turning green, which means you cannot eat them, green potatoes are poisonous and not safe) it’s important to ‘earth up’ every week or so. Then comes the point where you cannot cover them anymore. Now you can stop. Then the beautiful flowers come and when finished, you will see the plant begin to wilt. It’s time then to harvest.
Thats all that is needed and there really is nothing better than eating your own potatoes!