Our home grown strawberries are looking and tasting good and the potatoes are starting to flower

Strawberries  .

Picking strawberries, today was a good day for strawberries enough were ready to pick and enjoy as a tasty snack later. Now is a good time to add a reminder that it is important to wash the fruits you pick (in the garden/or on the allotment) before eating them.

I also noticed the gooseberries are starting to plump up in size and that the red gooseberries are starting to 'colour up'. Wow this is when it starts to get exciting and really interesting, not knowing how much progress is being made between visits to the plot .



First Early Potatoes, how to check if they are ready to eat. 

A simple way to find out if the first early potatoes are ready.

I am holding back from checking on the first early potatoes that are flowering *.

Later on (maybe next week) , I will check on the size of the new potatoes that are forming on the first earlies that are flowering.

A way to check if your potatoes are ready.
I will check on the new potatoes progress not by digging them up but by gently unearthing a few potatoes near the surface. If they are not big enough to eat I will gently replace the soil over them. If you do this new potato checking process with care the plant is not damaged and the new baby potatoes remain attached to the 'mother potato' so they can carry on growing. If you are lucky enough to find new potatoes big enough to eat, gently remove a few for today's meal and leave the rest to grow on. You can harvest/crop a few potatoes as and when you need them from the first earlies in this way for a few days or weeks until you want to harvest more of them.

*I am giving the potatoes  a bit more time because the weather has been so dry here; I think it may have delayed the new baby potatoes from making progress in the week when I was away and unable to water them.

Are My Potatoes Ready? How Do I know When To dig up my potatoes?

When to dig up your potatoes.

The first time you grow your own potatoes you feel in the dark about certain things.  Almost as much in the dark as the potatoes that are tucked away under the soil you heaped on them when you earthed them up.

Most of the potato growing information can be read on blogs,Internet articles or in books.

How to tell when you potatoes are ready to dig up does not appear to be covered in as much depth though.

I can explain to you an easy way to tell if your potatoes are ready without digging up the potatoes and wasting any of your potato crop if it is too early to harvest them.

I cover this subject in greater depth in my HubPages article on how to tell when you should begin harvesting potatoes here is the link:

How to tell when to dig up your potatoes. Furtling New Potatoes

The short answer to if you should begin harvesting your new potatoes is simple... have a look at the potatoes ...

 remove some of the soil from the side of the mounded up earth and take a look at the potatoes that are there.  If they are too small return the soil to cover them over and wait until you have let them grow bigger. 

As a reminder -

• If you planted first earlies they will be ready first.

 The variety of seed potato gives an indication of which of these groups the potatoes you planted where and the packet they came in will have said  -   

first early, second early, or main crop seed potato

• In the UK the further North you live the later you will have planted your seed potatoes. Therefore your friends in the South will be harvesting potatoes earlier than you can.
• Most potatoes flower at some stage, this gives a clue to the stage they are at.
• Main Crop potatoes are not usually ready to harvest until later in the season.
• First earlies can be ready from June.
• Second earlies are also harvested earlier than main crops.

You can see from this that although it is worth looking  for your first earlies to be ready and for some people second earlies. Main crops usually are ready later in the summer.

I have several pages on potato growing on my HubPages articles - they span the growing season from selecting which to buy to telling if they  are ready to harvest yet. The next one I write will be about main crop harvesting as they are the ones you will be able to store. Not the time for that yet, though.

Enjoy your new potatoes, they are a hundred times more tasty than shop ones. The first of the potatoes you harvest - boiled with a sprig of mint and served with a little butter melting over them; is the best way to taste them at their best.  That is the reward for your earlier efforts.