It’s that time of year again when you head to the garden centre, potato day or order your seed potatoes online ready for the growing year ahead. I’m a big fan of the chitting process and like to start doing this middle of February so that the potatoes are ready to plant out on Good Friday (or near enough!)
We were out delivering a large order of metal garden hurdles in the New Forest this weekend and popped to a garden centre to have a look around (and have some tea and cake of course!) We just so happened to chance upon the seed potatoes and couldn’t resist the low price of £4.00 per rather large bag. We usually get our seed potatoes a little later in February but came to the conclusion that it would be the same bags just left chitting in the shop rather then at home!
This year I have decided to just grow International Kidney’s, I’ve grown them for the past 2 years and they haven’t let me down, plus they taste delicious too. Last year I grew the variety Charlotte too, however because my plot is rather tiny and I only have 4 rows by 3m deep so I’ve decided to fill it with the Jersey Royal favourite. My Dad on the other hand will be growing the varieties Cara and Maris Piper this year.
Now all we need to do is stand the potatoes up in a tray and place them somewhere light but not in direct sunlight so that they can chit. Then six weeks down the line they’ll be ready to plant out and we’ll be eating homegrown potatoes before you know it 🙂
2 thoughts on “Potato Shopping”
You can also try planting some in buckets. I do this every year and will be starting next week. I always chose Rocket for this method and have always had excellent results. Not only that I do have a really early crop. If there is a frost forcast I put them back in the greenhouse and cover with fleece. If you do try this method Katie make sure you don’t let them dry out. In the garden I chose Accent first earliest and Kestrel second earlies, both varieties are slug resistant. I never bother with main crop. Good luck with everything. David
Unfortunately I don’t even have the room for buckets! I know quite a few people that use this method however, and they also seem to get good results. Thanks for all the advice 🙂