Last of the new potatoes

I have recently harvested the last of the potatoes I planted in the Spring. They were mostly Earlies and Second Earlies (only the Pink Fir Apple is regarded as an Early Maincrop), so it was high time they came out of their pots. Actually there has been so much rain recently that the pots (depite numerous drainage holes) were almost waterlogged and I had been worried that the tubers would begin to rot!

There were four pots remaining - one each of PFA, Anya, Charlotte and Juliette - and I took them all. The harvest was a real mixed bag in every way. Some of the tubers were nice and clean; some of them had a lot of scab, one or two had worked their way to the surface and gone green in the sunlight, and a couple were squishy (presumably because of the wet conditions). The total weight of tubers from the 4 pots was 1.97Kg, which fits neatly with what I consider to be an average yield (500g per pot).

I sorted the yield into three piles:

Good  - usable with no special attention. A total of 1426 grams.
Poor - partly useable, with some work to remove scab etc. A total of 520 grams.
Unuseable - straight into the bin! Fortunately only 28 grams.

Good - Charlotte and Juliette

Good - Pink Fir Apple and Anya

Poor - a mixture of all types

Unuseable by any stretch of the imagination

Now that my main crop has come to an end, I am starting to think about the batch I planted at the end of June. I have six more containers of  "Charlotte", the variety which this year has produced the best crop for me, both in terms of quantity and quality. The first flowers are open now, so hopefully there are tubers forming down below now, and it won't be long before they reach maturity. Funnily enough the Charlotte that I had earlier in the year had white flowers, but these ones have mauve ones:

Late-planted Charlotte

Still over the horizon, but already in the back of my mind, are the four pots containing recently-planted tubers of "Ratte". This is a real speciality variety, which commands a price in the shops nearly three times the price that of so-called "ordinary" varieties! I may have left it too late for these to reach maturity before the return of cold weather, but I reckon it's worth a go.

Ratte