Sarah and I dug up the potato bed this afternoon. We got just under 6 kg of small to medium sized potatoes. There were a lot of very small bite-sized ones, so we’ll be cooking them up first.
I think we planted the Dutch Cream seed potatoes in late September or early October. We planted eight.
They flowered around early to mid November, and then started dying back around the start of December. I probably should have left them a little longer before digging them up – they weren’t real big, but then I’m not sure if they would have got much bigger anyway. I was afraid if we left them too long they’d start to rot, especially with more rain forecast this week.
I didn’t get any photos of us digging up the potatoes – it was too messy! The dirt we planted into was a mixture of (not very good) commercial garden mix, mushroom compost and stable sweepings. I kept adding more as the potato plants grew – this is supposed to make more potatoes develop. The soil now is incredibly rich, well broken down, and chock-full of worms. Now I have to figure out what to plant in there next!
We left the dirt on the potatoes and stored them in a cardboard box, in layers, not touching each other, with hessian in between each layer. The box is then stored in the cool dark garage. There are only 6 kg, so they really don’t need to be kept for very long. A few weeks should see them all eaten!
I look forward to planting potatoes come autumn. I will need to build up lots more garden beds though as Vanessa wants a fairly large crop.
We are melting here today with temps around 37 degrees. I am sure that it is a fair bit cooler in the Gong.
Hey, awesome to hear from you! It’s not quite that hot down here – we’ve had a bit of rain lately, and the temperature is just nice.
I want to plant more potatoes soon, so I’ll have to figure out when is the best time. They do taste great!