Colleen Seed Potatoes
I’m already thinking about Spring here at Horticulture HQ in Newtowncunningham where Christmas is but an interruption to my gardening!
I was delighted when John from GreenHill Farm messaged to say he had some Colleen seed potatoes ready for sale…but ‘Spuds in December!?’ I hear you say. And I get where you’re coming from.
But obtaining seed potatoes now and chitting these you’ll have well chitted seed potatoes ready for planting in February in your polytunnel, and then ready for Harvest in May…2 months earlier than their counterparts planted outside.
The easiest way to grow spuds in a polytunnel or glasshouse is in large buckets or bags, where space is an issue. 5 seed potatoes into bag should yield 50 or so nice new potatoes.
You can see the cluster of Shoots together on these, this is the RoseEnd, scoop out for better sized crops
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Of course if you have space, then definitely growing them in the ground can be easier in the short term, but can be troublesome if you’re being ‘proper’ and maintaining a good crop rotation (Potatoes and Tomatoes are the same family, and as such you can’t follow a tattie crop with your tomatoes), so for many growing them in a bucket is the easiest method, as when you’ve harvested you can just spread the used compost or soil around the plants in the garden.
Chitting is the simple process of kick-starting the growth of potatoes outside the soil. Simply take your seed potatoes and place them eye side up in an egg box on a sunny frost-free windowsill.
After 4-6 weeks you should get some nice stumpy growths develop – at this stage they’re ready for planting. Chitting seed potatoes has many advantages, ranging from the crop being ready to harvest earlier to ensuring that no gaps develop from planting unviable seeds.
Put 10 gardeners in a room and they’ll be 10 opinions on the best method for chitting seed potatoes, my ‘secret’ method is to remove the eyes from the ‘rose end’ of the seed with a tattie peeler, by scooping out these eyes and leaving eyes to shoot from the shoulders/side of the seed, by doing this you’ll get less potatoes per seed, but any potatoes formed will be off a bigger size. Don’t just break the shoots off with your finger, these will only regrow and you’ll get the normal mix of small and decent size spuds at harvest, the scooping out to 3mm deep will prevent regrowth completely. Give it a try and see how you get on….
Colleen is a great Irish bred variety, great cropping, suitable for early growing like this and good blight resistance.
5 or 6 seed potatoes planted into a bag will give a good harvest
In the tunnel you’ll have to keep an eye for late frosts, so keep your crop covered with fleece until your harvesting – like we chatted last week the Fleece will keep the crop warmer also, thus giving you better growth and better yields!
With careful planning it’s possible to be harvesting spuds on numerous occasions in the year – spuds planting in Feb will crop in May, Earlies planted in March should crop July, Earlies replanted in July should crop for December, Maincrop planted in April should crop September onwards, Late Maincrop (such as Golden Wonders) will harvest November…like all aspects of vegetable gardening it’s about planning and sticking to a plan.
So when you’re looking out at the rain just think about Chitting some potatoes and planning for Spring harvests!
Gareth Austin
Gareth Austin is resident Horticulturist with BBC Radio Foyle, a member of the Chartered Institute of Horticulturists and Horticultural Lecturer with the National Learning Network. For more see www.garethaustin.com or join Gareth on Twitter @GardenerGareth .
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