Just over a month ago now (a week or so late), I planted this season’s seed potatoes. They are already up to the stage where they need hilling up, so this morning, before work (dressed very inappropriately in skirt and stockings) I tipped a couple of buckets of compost around them. Job done.
I have just a dozen potatoes, of a couple of varieties, scattered around my garden. Each one will yield 1 to 2 kilos of spuds, depending on how diligent I am about hilling them up, over a couple of months. If I am willing to dedicate another couple of buckets of compost to each plant in another couple of weeks, and the weather doesn’t heat up too fast, I should get the top end of that yield. That’s plenty for us, more than enough carbohydrates really, but home grown new potatoes are such a delicacy!
These will be ready to start harvesting by bandicooting (stealing spuds from under the mulch without uprooting the whole plant) by around the end of October. By November the plant will have flowered and died back and I will dig up the last of the crop and use the compost hill to mulch the area ready for zucchini or something else that likes lots of compost. I will plant another round of spuds in Autumn, in a different spot to avoid disease build up and spread around the compost bounty. These later ones will yield slightly higher as we head into cooler nights in their bearing season.
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We are trying potatoes this year… going to put them in soon, and hope a late Spring frost doesn’t knock them around!