How To Grow Potatoes
My latest blog tells you all you need to know to grow the perfect potatoes in an easy to follow guide. It’s gotta be simple, I’m only 5 right!
Lulu growing potatoes
How to grow potatoes…
- Buy some seed potatoes
- Chit your potatoes on a window sill as soon as you buy them. Chitting just means letting the wee “eyes” grow a bit longer which gives them a head start for when you pop them in the ground.
- Plant them in the ground about 20cm deep and about 30cm apart.
- “Earth up” your potatoes as soon as shoots start to appear, raking up the soil around them and covering them back up, protecting them from the sunlight. You will need to do this 2-3 times in the growing season.
- Feed your potatoes every week, they will grow big and strong, just like me.
- Early varieties will be ready in 8 weeks, main crops in the summer. Gently move soil aside to pick your potatoes, you don’t need to pick them all at once and they taste best freshly picked.
Our potato crop
Top tips:
- You can grow potatoes anywhere. Veg beds, compost bags, specialist potato bags, old tyres, tall pots, whatever you have to hand.
- Potatoes need drainage so if you have clay soil then dig in some gravel. You are planting in pots, raise the pots and make sure they have drainage holes.
- Potatoes like sunshine (like me!) so don’t grow them in a shady corner.
- Always water the base of the plant not the foliage.
- Remove flowers when they appear to put more energy into the tuber the plant is creating.
- Dig up your potatoes on a dry day and leave them to dry in the sun for an hour.
Lulu x
5 Reasons To Grow Your Own Fruit & Veg
Sometimes people ask “Why bother to grow your own fruit and veg? It’s more hassle. Sometimes crops fail. Why not just pop along to the supermarket and get your ready picked, washed, convenient produce?” Well, there are lots of reasons but we’ve freshly picked our top five, just for you…
Cracking courgettes!
IT’S CHEAPER
In the current economic climate, more and more people are struggling to make ends meet. Growing your own fruit and veg is a lot cheaper than buying it fresh in the supermarket. Lots of us have our own garden or space for a few pots or there are lots of allotments available which are cheap to rent. Packets of seeds don’t cost much and if you keep your eyes peeled they are often being given away for free!
Lovely leeks!
IT’S HEALTHIER
Eating fruit and veg is a great way of keeping healthy. And when we grow it ourselves it’s even healthier as it couldn’t be any fresher. Plus we can grow it organically and know there hasn’t been any yucky pesticides sprayed all over it. Also, gardening is a great form of exercise so there’s another tick in the healthy box!
Super salad!
IT’S TASTIER
It’s genuinely true that what we grow ourselves tastes better. The tomatoes that we grow in our own garden couldn’t survive in a supermarket as they have such fine skins and are bursting with juiciness. Fruit and veg starts to deteriorate as soon as it’s picked so the quicker you can get it into your tummies the better. Raspberries don’t even make it to the house in our garden, they are in our tummies within two seconds of being picked!
Awesome onions!
IT’S BETTER FOR THE PLANET
By not relying on supermarkets as much, we are reducing carbon emissions by requiring less trucks which have to transport fruit and veg many miles to get from the grower to the supermarket and then to our homes. There’s also no packaging required to get your potatoes or carrots from your veg patch to your house. And no chemicals required to grow them if you grow organically.
Perfect potatoes!
IT’S FUN!
We all know that being outdoors and getting dirty is a lot of fun! Doctor’s are even prescribing gardening as therapy these days. So get outdoors, dig over a section of your garden and see how much fun it is to see fruit and veg growing from teeny tiny seeds which eventually are big enough for us to eat. Amazing!
Mucky fun!
So why not choose at least one new vegetable or fruit to try growing this year and see what you think…
Lulu & Tilda xx