Growing Potatoes in the Vegetable Garden from Chitting to Harvest

Potatoes are described as 1st Earlies, 2nd Earlies and Maincrop. This means how long it takes for potatoes to be ready for harvest, not the order you should plant them in. In fact they should all be planted at the same time, so the 2nd Earlies will be ready to eat when you’ve finished the 1st Earlies.

1st Earlies

1st Earlies should be grown so they can be dug and enjoyed immediately. Because they are at their most delicious when young you will not get a big crop from each plant, maybe only enough to feed 4 people, but you can plant a few each week for 3 or 4 weeks to ensure at least a month’s worth of exquisite new potatoes.

2nd Earlies

You can sometimes treat 2nd Earlies the same way, especially the waxy ones. Some others make good bakers, so should be stored when harvested.

Maincrop

They will produce a lot of potatoes per plant and are generally grown for storage in a cool, dark, frost-free place.

Potato varieties can be classed as ‚”boilers”, ‚”bakers”, ‚”roasters” or ‚”mashers”, and it’s important to pick a variety that will do the job for you. If a variety makes good bakers and mashers, it will also do well when cooked in fat. On the other hand, waxy, salad potatoes will make rotten chips, so check out any variety before buying and planting it.

Getting potatoes ready for planting

Chitting potatoes

Seed potatoes will start sprouting when they are kept in temperatures above 3¬∞ – 4¬∞ C, but they mustn’t be planted out too early in northern climes. They are frost-sensitive, so the leaves will be ‘burnt’ by a late frost. Keep them in a cool, frost-free room. Put the tubers in egg boxes, preferably with the broader, upper part of the tuber to the top. In the light, the growing shoots will stay short and stubby. If kept in the dark, they will produce weak spindly shoots.

Where and when to plant potatoes

Potatoes will grow in any ground that isn’t waterlogged. A sunny spot will encourage the leaves to stay dry and therefore be less prone to attacks from blight. Potatoes are very greedy feeders, so the richer the soil the better. Potato foliage is frost sensitive, so it’s important that young shoots stay under the soil till all risk of frost is past. Rising global temperatures do seem to make it safer to plant a little earlier than 20 years ago, so gardeners will need to take local advice for planting dates but always wait for a mild spell: pleasanter for you and the potatoes. Here in southern Scotland, times will vary from early to mid April, depending on altitude.

Planting potatoes

In the open ground

1. Dig a trench one spade’s depth and width, piling the soil to one side.
2. Spread compost along the trench – it doesn’t need to be as fine as you’d normally use. Well rotted muck is also ideal as the potatoes are very greedy but not too discriminating.
3. [If possible] Lay a line of ‘leaky hose’ irrigation pipe along the trench. Potatoes are thirsty and it’s very difficult to get the water down into the soil when the plants are fully grown. Summer rain won’t do anything other than wet the leaves, so won’t help the plants. Regular under soil irrigation, every week or so once the foliage is around 20cm / 8inches tall, will give the potatoes the moisture they need and the crop you want. When grown without adequate amounts of water, you can be sure the crop will be puny.
4. With 1st Earlies, leave all the growing shoots on the seed potato, but remove all but 3 shoots on 2nd Earlies and Maincrop to get larger tubers. Place the tubers upright along the trench: 30cm / 1ft between 1st Earlies, 40cm 1ft 4in between 2nd Earlies and 45cm / 1ft 6in between Maincrop. 1 metre / 3ft between rows. You can plant more closely, but you’ll get smaller potatoes.
5. Cover the tubers with the soil originally dug out of the trench. You will end up with a low ridge.

Growing potatoes

When the shoots are through and about 8cm / 3in tall, start ‘earthing up’ the potatoes. This means raking the soil from each side of the row to make the ridge taller. Repeat this quite regularly until the foliage gets big. This will make life difficult for weeds and will make sure you don’t have green potatoes.

Start harvesting 1st Earlies when the plants start to flower; 2nd Earlies when the foliage starts to die back; and Maincrop a fortnight after the foliage has died down.

For planting other vegetables, see “Spring Planting in the Vegetable Garden”