Digging up our main crop potatoes -

Making a start, getting our main crops ready to store for future use. 


We are digging up some of the main crop potatoes, but not digging them all up at once. The reason for this is that, we do not want to leave them in the ground for too long in case of slug damage.  But we do want to harvest in small enough batches to  prepare them for storing in hessian or paper sacks. This means we need to leave them in the garden to dry ( we put ours on trays or wire racks), the when they are dry and the loose soil is off them we will bag them up into the hessian sacks or paper potato sacks to store.  


Any damaged potatoes should be used up straight away, as they are no good for storage purposes. We also label up the sacks as which to use first if some look more prone to not storing well.
Even once we have stored them away in a frost proof place we will still check the sacks regularly, as one potato rotting can spread to others. Plus it is not pleasant putting your hand in a potato sack and picking up a yucky smelly potato, we want none of that thank you.

More soon, we are harvesting Romano potatoes and they are looking good.

September is the time we dig up our main crop potatoes

Next week we will start to dig up some of our main crop potatoes on dry days. We have found in past years that if left in the ground for too long they are more likely to be damaged by slugs. it is always best to follow the advice given on harvesting dates when you purchase your seed potatoes they will usually give you dates for harvesting.

when we dig up the main crop potatoes we lay them out to dry on the plot as we work there. if the potatoes are still damp when we bring them back home we put them to air dry, brush off the loose soil on them.  then sorting out any damaged ones to use first, we store the rest in paper sacks or hessian sacks until we are ready to use them. Potatoes need to be stored in a cool,dry place and I usually stand the sack on an old mat to keep it off the concrete floor in the garage. It is not a good idea to store them in frost vulnerable places.

After the potatoes are out of the ground we will plant some areas later with onions - but the rest will be sown with phacelia seeds.