Watch as Simon shows how to grow potatoes.
From planting chitted seed potatoes, through to earthing-up and right up to harvesting the crop ready for hot buttered potatoes with a little homegrown mint. Grow together with us.
How to chit potatoes:
Chitting potatoes is the means by which we encourage seed potatoes to sprout shoots before planting out. This gives them a bit of boost before planting and helps them to crop earlier and more abundantly. All that chitting means is that you place seed potatoes somewhere very light and cool (we use egg boxes to stand them in as they make perfectly sized ‘potato’ holders’!), then you simply wait for them to sprout.
Don’t be discouraged if they shrivel a bit, that’s completely normal and they’re still happy tubers. We’re chatting our potatoes now to give them a head start, but you can order and plant first-early varieties in March without chitting them at home, as they’ll probably arrive pre-chitted and sprouting. Plant them with the pointy end up.
Which varieties to choose:
When it comes to choosing varieties we order seed potatoes from the first early, second early and main crop varieties to give us the longest run of new potatoes and main crop harvests (from June to October).
Here, Simon is planting up firstly early variety, Foremost, but he’ll also get varieties like Rocket off to a start now. Maris Bard is another favourite and Swift is a good producer.
In mid-April, he’ll follow on with second-early’s. Charlotte is a good salad potato and tried-and-tested main crop varieties include Maris Piper, Picasso and Desiree.
You can find out more about the various types and varieties of potato available here
To give an idea of just what a bumper harvest to expect from three chitted seed potatoes, we normally expect a harvest of a whopping 2-3kg.
Why not give it a go and grow along with us.
