In the continuing saga of us growing our own veg we’ve hit a major milestone. While we’ve been eating more lettuce and other greenery than you can shake a stick at (we’ve had to give some to our neighbours such is the amount we’ve grown) we’ve been really looking forward to our ‘proper’ veg being ready. I’m thinking traditional stuff like carrots, beetroot, onions and of course potatoes.
We’d been growing potatoes in bags – the sort you add more soil to when the potato leaves have found their way to the surface, bury them and let them break through again and so on until the bag is full. We knew that you’re supposed to wait until they flower before harvesting but ours hadn’t and the first couple of bags we planted were starting to go yellow as if they’d been hit with blight. Turns out that in fact this also means they’re ready for picking so we tipped the first bag out to see what we got – and personally I’m pretty impressed!
To a farmer growing potatoes is as trivial as breathing in and out, but since I’d never done it before it felt like a real novelty. We went with anya potatoes which are small, thin and tasty. We planted two in each bag starting back in March and that was long enough to wait! Anyway, have a look at the photos below to see what we did and ended up with:
This plant growing is definitely a learning experience and there are lessons we’ll be applying next year such as thinning the carrots and beetroots out more, what to plant from seed and what to grow indoors first and many other things. It’s been fun so far and it just makes me want to buy a house with a huge garden so I can fit poly tunnels and grow grow grow! I think I’ll need that lottery win first though…
glad to see your spuds are doing well. Just eaten the first of mine today from the allotment..
PS. them carrots look far better then mine.
Roger in Suuny Sheffield
Mmmm, nice fresh potatoes! 🙂
As for the carrots, I think they benefitted from being covered for ages, but that was balanced with us not breaking up the soil enough before planting them – they’re a bit strangely shaped. But they do taste delicious!
I am growing Maris Piper and rooster potatoes for the first time, and my leaves have gone yellow so a good tip from you is to see what Ive got.!!!!!
Good luck! We’ve been really lucky and the potatoes we’ve grown have been delicious! Hopefully you’ll get the same results as us.
[…] our successes growing our own veg last year we decided this time to take it to another level. We bought a greenhouse and created a […]