Potatoes for Christmas
21.08.2023 - 11:48
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
It’s hot, it’s humid, and I am longing for the shorter, cooler and damper days of autumn. My forays into the garden are brief; I am grateful that it has rained enough recently for me to avoid having to water. I am still waiting for the courgettes to produce edible fruit, but the climbing French beans (‘Helda’) are producing a handful every few days, and they are delicious.
Last weekend we popped into a garden centre, and the ‘second cropping’ potatoes caught my eye. Also known as ‘late’ or ‘autumn cropping’ potatoes, these are seed potatoes that have been stored at low temperatures to keep them dormant so that can be started into growth in summer rather than spring. The selling point for them is often that they should enable you to have new potatoes for Christmas dinner. There is a caveat – you need to be able to keep them frost-free, so it’s usual to grow them in containers so that they can be moved under cover when winter arrives.
We chose ‘Sharpe’s Express’, because the label said it was ideal for containers, and my initial plan was to replant the three potato crates that I planted up with ‘Blue Danube’ in the spring. We’ve harvested one and it’s time to empty the other two. The garden isn’t usually very frosty (although it’s not frost-free), and I thought I would move the crates into the nook where the worm composter lives. It’s surrounded on two sides by the house walls, and stays above freezing all year round, although it’s pretty shady.
But there has been a change of plan. I have been struggling to grow garlic successfully in this garden, and this year I tried a new technique – planting it deeply. The plants suffered badly from rust, and the tops have died back. I pulled a plant up a few days ago, and although it has
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