Even if you are short on growing space it's easy to grow the humble spud at home and to enjoy the taste of freshly harvested, home grown potatoes. Potatoes can easily be grown in pots and planters, recycled waterbutts and dustbins, purpose made potato growing bags and even inside old car tyres...in fact they can pretty much be grown in anything you can find as long as there's enough room for a good root system to thrive and enough space to mound up earth as the plants grow.
There are a huge variety of seed potatoes available to the home grower, usually marketed as First Earlies, Second Earlies and Maincrop; you'll also find varieties marketed specifically as Salad potatoes and wide selection of traditional Heirloom potatoes.
First and Second Earlies are ideal potatoes to grow if space is a premium; they spend less time in the ground leaving the ground clear by mid summer for other vegetables to take their place. Maincrop potatoes remain in the ground for approximately 20 weeks after planting and are the best to grow if you're looking for a crop to store for future eating however they do take up more space and will take up ground space for longer than earlier varieties. They can still be grown in pots but need more space than their early cropping cousins,
This season I've decided to grow he following varieties;
Rocket and Swift, both First Earlies. Rocket has a waxy skin and is great in summer salads
Pink Fir Apple, a traditional Heirloom Main Crop variety, lovely knobbly tubers, pink skins full of flavour
Desiree, red skinned Main Crop. An old favourite of mine, a heavy cropper with great flavour. Stores well too
Before planting I chit my spuds.
By chitting your seed potatoes you are simply giving them maximum opportunity to sprout before you plant them. I place my seed potatoes in egg trays and stand on a warm dry windowsill so that they can benefit from the winter sunshine, but anywhere with plenty of natural light is ideal. When the shoots are between 1/2 an inch and an inch long I then plant out.
Last season I made a very early planting in February in old waterbutts inside my poly tunnel.
Planted into warm soil and kept undercover until the temperatures outside improved we feasted on new potatoes in early May. The remainder were planted outside in pots and raised beds in March, Main Crop followed in late April. I also thoroughly recommend growing a few spuds inside a stack of car tyres, the rubber keeps the soil warm and protects from frost and it's easy to add another tyre as you mound up soil around your growing plant. Harvesting is super easy too, just remove the tyres and 'dig' for buried treasure with your hands.
Happy growing!
