(soft gentle music)
- Potatoes are,
among many of the questions I'm asked is,
when are they ready to harvest?
And what are the different types you can grow?
Do you need to earth them up?
Quite a bit of folklore about potatoes
which we'll have a look at in this video.
And look at what we harvested a couple of days ago.
That's Linzer Delikatess.
They were growing there.
And next to them were these ones, Lily Rose.
Lovely red potato.
They're quite red underneath as well, in the skin.
And that red colour goes right the way through the potato.
That many potatoes came from that area of ground
which is now planted with leeks.
And partly, that answers one of the questions,
is when are they ready because it's a bit like
how long is a piece of string?
It depends partly what you want to do with the ground.
And, I had these leek plants ready to go in.
So that also balances the potato question.
I don't wanna leave the potatoes too long
because then we'll lose out on time of leeks in the ground
which means a smaller leek harvest.
So the potatoes actually, these three rows,
there was one and a half rows of red
and one and a half rows with the salad,
which these impressed me, by the way.
I mean, to grow that big for a salad potato is pretty good.
And they were starting to go a bit yellow.
They were more ready than the next block of potatoes
we see there.
So you're looking for some yellowing of the leaves,
falling over more than upright.
Though they used to start off upright
and looking really vibrant and green.
And then, as they start to go a bit yellow, that's a sign.
You don't wanna wait
until they're sort of yellow brown, completely dried.
If you leave them too long
as they're going a bit pale colour,
you often get more slugs and snails damage.
That's a factor, well, partly with the weather and climate.
Like here we're temperate climate.
It's been a damp summer, but actually quite nice really.
And there are probably more slugs and snails
than normal.
So that is a factor more this year
than if it was a dry summer.
And also when you got new ground, this was new ground.
Also, it was new ground over there where I harvested Estima,
which is a different variety.
That's a second early compared to old ground over there
where I harvested Sharpes Express, which is a first early.
So you've got those different categories of earliness
if you like, or lateness, which would be main crops.
That's the three types.
First early, second early, main crop.
Main crops tend to come later
and they're called main crop
'cause that would be the sort of farmer's
big field of potatoes growing lots and lots to store.
Having said that though,
these second earlys also store really well,
and they crop more early
which gives you this opportunity to make a second planting.
So of those two, I'm now gonna compare them with Charlotte,
which is pretty much my favourite.
It's also a second early and it grows pretty large.
And you can see these are still green.
These would still grow more,
but they're still good to harvest I'm pretty sure.
I haven't looked actually, but I know from experience
these usually by this time they're getting close to ready.
So we've used polythene here
because there's a lot of bindweed.
You can see some of it growing
through the planting hole.
We've been pulling it frequently
while these have been growing
cause the bindweed comes out of the hole.
We just make a very small hole with a tram
to plant the potato seed.
That was the 5th of May.
We're now the 25th of July.
So, time has gone on.
Having said that, you know, 5th of May to 23rd of July
is not a huge long time.
All of this has happened, all of this growth
in less than 12 weeks.
And that's one of the great things about potatoes
because you're starting with a large seed if you like,
they do part away pretty well.
And we waited to plant them until 5th of May
because this year there were a lot of frost in the spring,
and potato leaves are killed by frost.
And so there's no advantage to plant them too early,
but you don't wait too late.
In this situation we got it about right.
And here we go.
Let's have a look.
So this is no dig, which means no soil disturbance
has happened here since.
Well, at all.
Basically, this is compost on top.
It's a combination of mushroom compost
and green waste compost
and look at all the bindweed that's growing there.
So the roots of this bindweed, it is still very much alive
but the leaves have not been able to photosynthesize
because that's what the polythene is doing.
Polythene or plastic.
This is actually farm plastic I got from my son.
He used it already on a clamper silage
and we'll use it again several times.
I don't worry about using plastic like this
because when you use it and reuse it and reuse it
I think the environmental impact is very small.
And when you compare that to how it's enabling us
to control the bindweed say without disturbing the soil
and leaving soil undisturbed, no dig.
You get so much more life.
Like quite often doing this, we find toads for example.
And I think they're, well, I hope they're eating slugs
among other things.
And, you know, you wouldn't get that
if you're digging and cultivating.
Well, you got fewer toads
'cause you're disturbing so much life basically.
So this is a really nice way to do it.
And now the moment of truth.
Pulling the plant to find what's here.
There we are.
Hey, that's pretty nice.
Yeah, I'll take that.
Charlotte, you can see that they do get quite a good size.
And so the amount of compost used to grow this is not huge.
It's, I reckon there's the soil level there.
That's no more than
three inches seven and half centimetres of compost
and we have not used any feeds or fertilisers.
No other input, no slug pellets,
just nothing else basically.
I'm catching them before blight might arrive late.
That's another reason to not hanging around
especially in weather like this.
It almost feels like it could rain at the moment.
It definitely is going to.
It's not quite.
And, you know, although these can grow some more
and probably we're gonna harvest them all
in the next few days.
And regarding earthing up or whether you need to do that,
here the polythene has helped to keep the light off.
That's one reason for when people talk about earthing up
is to keep the light off the developing tubers
so they don't go green.
If they go green, that's something called solanine.
It's a little bit mildly poisonous.
You won't kill yourself,
but you don't wanna eat too much of it.
So it's keeping the potatoes white basically.
That's the only reason a no dig that I would do it,
except for occasionally, if I've planted really early
like the Charlottes Express first early
they came up while it was still frosty.
So then you just do that.
Just mound up the surface compost around them.
That's a no dig.
That's the extent of earthing up.
And then in terms of watering,
well, we have not watered here at all.
And people often ask with polythene,
how does the water get in the ground?
Very good question, but actually, it does.
It just floats around on the top
and then goes in the planting holes.
A little bit sits in a few hollows they might be,
but most of it goes in and you see
how this ground is lovely.
It's moist without being too wet.
And it's heavy soil underneath it.
Soil over clay.
And actually is interesting
just to have a little rummage down there.
We can start to feel the soil opening up a bit.
You know, I can't get my fingers in.
This is undisturbed pasture and weeds
and so they're bringing up a bit of humic soil,
which is nice, you know, it's loamy silt.
It's been in pasture for a long time.
So it's a good start.
If you've got a bad soil, a difficult really poor soil,
then I'd put more compost on
to grow your potatoes initially.
And that in time, that will all be good enriching the soil.
You won't need to put heavy dose of compost on every year.
So there we are.
Have a go and actually, yeah, don't rush too early
to plant your potatoes.
They grow fast once they get going.
Choose your type, choose your variety.
You've got many possibilities.
It's a lot of fun.
(soft gentle music)