Potatoes

When I first visited my plot with the Allotment Site Secretary, Celina, I was depressed. I did not want to refuse it, because I feared I would be taken off the waiting list, but the site looked daunting. Celina showed me how the soil was mostly clay and told me that I needed to work on raised beds, because she believed this would be the only way to grow anything on clay soil that partially floods in the rainy season. I told her that I wanted to think and discuss it with my other half before accepting to rent the site. But when I took him to the site, my husband (did I ever told you he is a genius?), who has zero experience with gardening, had a completely different approach to Celina, who has been gardening on the allotment for years. Instead of looking at what the previous renters had done and how they had failed, he looked around, noticed how the the entrance is higher than the end of the plot, ignored the latter and started looking at the former closely, removing trash that was laying around and using the tip of his shoe to dig a bit. He immediately concluded the soil on that half of the plot was rich and ready to plant after some cleaning up and digging. We immediately contacted Celina and accepted to rent it. Now, that we have gone back with digging tools and done a bit more of research, we have realized that only the lower end of the site has bad soil. The mystery is, why did the previous renters only worked on that part? No wonder they have failed. I sort of feel sorry for them. They had dug a few small beds on terrible clay soil that, when the weather started to dry turned hard as stone. The only thing that survived (I am not sure if they planted anything else) was a bed of potatoes. Which, as I mentioned on my first post, is not even a raised bed. And this is the story of how I came to own a bed of potatoes.

There is a small problem with inheriting a potato bed. How to know when to harvest? Are they early potatoes that should be dug up at the end of spring or beginning of summer, or main crop potatoes to be dug up in Autumn? I am not even sure if there is a problem if you leave early varieties in the soil to mature, or dig up main crop varieties early. Maybe there is not, but all books and websites assume that you have planted it if you are the one who is digging them up and that you know what you have planted. My solution is to dig up one plant and try it. If they are good, I will assume they are early ones or, better said, I will not care if they are not.

Potato (Solanum tuberosum)

Soil

deep, well drained

Aspect

sunny

Row spacing

30 cm

Plant spacing

60 cm

Germination

3 weeks for chitting, shoots emerge 3 weeks after planting

Time to maturity

18 weeks

Sow outside

April-May

Sow undercover

chit in March

Plant outside

April-May

Harvest

July-September

Store

clamp for 2 months, or keep in hessian or paper sacks for one year

Pests and diseases

blight

Take this list with a grain of salt, since much depends on variety. For example, early potatoes cannot be stored.