Planting Potatoes by Easter? Old Wives tale!

Many people think that you need to be planting potatoes by Easter Sunday. This is an old wives tale! Traditionally, this was the first long weekend of the year and many people enjoyed being out in the garden for the first time. Others, we think enjoyed getting out of the kitchen and were given an important job to do! As Easter can vary each year by a huge amount, this is definitely not a reliable date. The storage facilities now mean that your potatoes can be sent out in perfect condition all throughout May and into June. Requiring 100 days for early and about 120 for main crops, a later planting simply means a later harvest. We are glad other people agree! See our FAQ for more details.

Kevin from English Homestead had fun with his girls planting Pink Gypsy, Salad Blue, Heidi Red and Highland Burgundy Red and then did a great Q&A with us. We love when bloggers are as excited about potatoes as we are! This is a great blog to follow and you can certainly say his kids are living the life most can only dream of!

Still Time To Plant Potatoes!

This is a collaborative  post
In gardening we are governed by many myths and old wife’s tales. Just the other day I was putting in some potatoes and someone said to me that I should have put them in on Good Friday. Now despite the fact that Good Friday moves every year, I can also say that there is no way commercial potato farmers follow these rules – and they get some pretty impressive crops. 

So there is still plenty of time to put in potatoes! 

Potato House contacted me the other day to see if I’d like to share this message and while looking at what they had online the girls fell in love with some of the more colourful varieties of potatoes. They kept laughing about having a blue potatoes in a salad! 

So that was it, we’ve already got some of our normal potatoes in, it was time to grow some that would make them really smile! 

In the end we got a great selection which included Pink Gypsy, Salad Blue, Heidi Red and Highland Burgundy Red. 

The main veg garden is filling up fast but one place we’ve completely neglected the last few months is the front garden. This is because the only time we’ve gone out that way is to take out the bins or when my wife has gone to work! I’ve not driven the truck in over five weeks now! 

But I want to make sure the beds are used! Putting something in low maintenance like potatoes is ideal! 

The girls helped me prepare the two beds, adding some well rotted manure to each (potatoes are hungry plants) and breaking the soil up. Unfortunately somehow these beds have got ground elder in so we had to spend some time digging out the roots (but I’m sure we left enough to cause us problems next year). What with all the nettles here and now ground elder it’s almost like the Romans didn’t like easy gardening (and I know people will tell me to eat them, but there is only so much we can eat of these plants I tell you!!!).

We planted the spuds just over a foot (30cm) apart and about 6 inches deep (15cm) and we’ll aim to earth them up a bit when they poke through in a few weeks time. 

There is something really satisfying about growing potatoes. One of the highest calorie crops worth growing on a small scale, my uncle always said that when you’d eat them the day of harvest that “potatoes that fresh have there own butter in ’em!” and it’s hard not to agree.

The girls are old hands at planting veg but it was fun to see them genuinely excited about planting something a bit different like this. They’re already hoping they’ll be able to feed the different coloured potatoes to their friends in the summer after (if) lock down ends! 

Potato House have loads of different varieties on their website ranging from unusual to the more regular staples we’re used to. 

They have also put a 10% discount for 1kg nets of Maris Peer, Setanta, Colleen, just use the code EngHome10 at the checkout. 

I’ve also asked them a range of questions, just because I’m super geeky about how things like seed potatoes are grown, so watch out for that post tomorrow. 

What is your favourite potato variety to grow? Are you still planning to grow some more?

###Although this is a collaborative post everything I’ve expressed in this post is true to me. Potatohouse were lovely to deal with, the potatoes came quickly and look to be in perfect condition. You should have seen the girls faces when they saw the colour of the potatoes they’ll get to dig up later in the year!###