Tips on Growing Tasty New Potatoes

Growing tasty new potatoes has one big advantage; you just can’t beat the flavour of early new potatoes taken straight from the earth and into the pan!

 

Is it wrong to also feel smug about it when the prices of ‘new’ potatoes on the supermarket shelves are at the same time at eye watering levels? I think not and in any case, the best flavour is all about the freshness that you can only get by growing your own! So if you want to join in, now is the time to get growing!

 

Getting Started

Of course, there is no way that you can plant seed potato tubers into the soil outside right now in January. At least that is, unless you’re reading this in Poldark country! There growing new potatoes takes advantage of Cornwall’s milder winters. Elsewhere, it’s far too cold and in any case there is a very strong chance that Jack Frost will ruin your chances if you jump the gun!

So to get those earliest and tastiest new potatoes you’ll need to start them off now. Go for the earliest and tastiest varieties that you can find. These will be labelled ‘first earlies’ and amongst them some will be quicker to mature than others. I’m growing a few ‘Lady Christl’ again this year and, although I find the more popular ‘Rocket’ yields better and earlier, it lacks the strength of flavour I want.

 

Growing in Containers

So I’m planning on growing a few tubers in very large containers filled with potting compost. I’ll grow them in my greenhouse until it’s warm enough to stand them outside.

There’s a little bit of heat in the greenhouse – enough to keep the temperature above freezing. Of course there’s plenty of light in there too.

 

‘Chitting’

To get them my seed potato tubers started I put them on bright windowsill inside.

Tubers are set up on end and there they will stay until the buds grow. I’m looking for fat, dark coloured, short shoots and they will come from the end of the tuber that has most tiny buds showing. Some people find this confusing and can’t be sure which end is which! For them, it might be easier to look for the end of the tuber that still bears the scar of where it was attached to the mother plant and that end should be at the bottom!

 

I’ll space three or four tubers evenly on top of a 30 cm diameter half filled with good potting compost. I’ll then cover the tubers with about 10 cm of compost and keep on covering the shoots as they grow until the pot is full.

I tried the Potatopot a few years ago and had reasonable success. This pot-within-a-pot allows you to harvest the tubers from the inside pot without disturbing those still developing. However, I wasn’t expecting this to be so popular with slugs! They seemed to relish the moisture and darkness that there was between the outer and inner pot.

 

No Dig Potatoes

If you would prefer growing tasty new potatoes without digging and not in pots then you could try growing them under black polythene sheeting. Simply cover your vegetable patch with a generous layer of compost – spent mushroom compost works well. Don’t be mean about it as you will need a layer of at least 10 cm depth. Of course, this is not wasted and can be dug into your soil to improve the structure of it after the potatoes are harvested. If you prefer and are going down the ‘no-dig’ route then you simply plant your next crop into it the mulch!

 

But back to the potatoes as a key part is to exclude the light from your developing tubers! This is essential as tubers go green in daylight and develop harmful properties. So you will need to make the smallest hole necessary to plant each seed potato under the black polythene sheet. A big bonus with this method is that the yields can be very high and those tubers are very clean when lifted.

 

You may care to read my blog on growing really early potatoes here too.

There’s more good information on growing potatoes here