Potato harvest

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This week I harvested the first potatoes from one of my big new containers. For a while now I have been dissatisfied with the containers in which I have been growing potatoes. I have been using mostly the plastic containers in which I buy pelleted chicken manure. They are OK, but perhaps a bit on the small side, even for just one seed potato tuber. The pots I bought earlier this year are considerably bigger (35 litres).

I filled these containers with composted stable manure and planted in each one a single seed-potato tuber.

Well, they have done their thing, and now it is harvest-time.  The potato “haulm” (foliage) is dying off, which is a sure sign that the tubers are ready.

On this occasion, I had help with the harvest, in the form of my little granddaughter Holly (3):

She wasn’t very keen to touch the “yucky” compost, and carefully lifted out each potato with a trowel. You should have seen her face (and heard her yell) when I lifted out an earthworm for her to see!

This is what we ended up with:

We got  just over a kilogram of potatoes from the one pot. I think that is a good result. These are “Charlotte”, a Second Early variety, and perhaps my favourite potato of all. (“Pink Fir Apple” would give it a good run for its money though.)

The extra volume of these new pots means that it is easier to keep the compost moist, and the benefit of that can be seen in the quality and size of the yield. Maybe I won’t be using the chicken manure pots any more!

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