Harvesting new potatoes

Harvesting new potatoes is one of the most pleasurable events in the gardener's calendar. There's something very satisfying about unearthing a crop whose quality and size you can't really guage until the plants come out of the ground.

As many of you will already know, I grow my potatoes in tubs and containers (many of them recycled chicken manure tubs), simply because I haven't got space for them in my raised beds. As it happens, this style of growing suits potatoes very well. I find that it is easier to keep them properly watered if the plants are in containers, and it is also easy to harvest one container at a time without disturbing anything else.

For the sake of any first-time potato growers who may be reading this, my post is going to be a "How to harvest new potatoes" sequence.

The first thing you need to be able to do is guage when the plants are ready for harvesting. Once the potato plant has produced flowers you can be fairly sure that some worthwhile tubers will have formed down below. On the other hand, if you wait until the "haulm" (foliage) has died down, or at least turned yellow, you will get a bigger yield. Look at the photos below. Both show the yield from one plant of the variety "Charlotte", grown in the same type of container, using the same type of compost, and planted at the same time. The ones on the Right were harvested 10 days after the ones on the left. You can see that the second batch produced more bulk - 512 grams as opposed to 350 grams.

Still, for me quality is more important than quantity, so I always want to harvest my potatoes early! This is how I do it...

Stage 1. I spread out an old Army groundsheet and assemble the things I'll need: the potato plant in its container (notice yellow leaves!); secateurs to cut off the foliage; a container to put compostable material in, and of course something to hold the harvest.

Cut off the foliage and set aside for composting.

Up-end the pot onto the groundsheet and tip out the compost, revealing the lovely golden bounty.

Be prepared for the fact that the original seed tuber will be in there somewhere. It may still be intact, but on the other hand it may be soft and squashy:

Carefully collect up all the potatoes.

Run your fingers through the compost several times. You'd be surprised how often you find another tuber just as you think you have finished. The are several more potatoes in the next photo, compared with the previous one.



So that's it. On this occasion, one pot of "Charlotte" yielded 512 grams of potatoes - easily enough for a generous serving for two people.

As well as the Charlotte, I also harvested one pot of "Anya". This type of potato is actually a relative of Charlotte, being a cross between Charlotte and Pink Fir Apple (PFA). The result is a potato that comes out much less knobbly than PFA (hence much easier to prepare), whilst retaining the "nutty" flavour so distinctive of PFA.

The seed tuber of the Anya plant was still pretty much intact.

So here's the joint yield of both plants, side-by-side. This Anya plant yielded 463 grams of tubers.

Charlotte (left) and Anya (right).

With a bit of luck, this post might persuade a few more people to grow some spuds out on their balcony or patio next year. You don't need a lot of space, and it really is worthwhile!

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After a long absence, and now that I have a worthwhile harvest to report, I'm putting this post forward for Daphne's Harvest Monday!