Tops aren’t everything

Tuesday's weather followed much the same pattern as yesterday with the sun not managing to break through until the early afternoon. We then had a very pleasant afternoon with plenty of sunshine and the temperature judge nudging 20°C.

The tops to most of our early potatoes have just about turned brown. In general our potatoes have produced little top growth this year compared to other years. The tops normally spread out onto our grass paths but not this year as they’ve remained small and within the bounds of their bed. I’ve assumed this is due to lack of water and that the crop underneath would be poor and consist of only small potatoes.

I decided to dig up our Winston crop. These are the tubers remaining after our sacks were planted up and they were planted outside in a short row to follow on from our indoor crop.

In sacks Winston had produced extensive haulms with good thick stems giving a good crop of potatoes.

I was amazed by the size of individual potatoes and the weight of the crop. Indeed most of the potatoes were a large size with very few small potatoes. The feeble haulms on top gave no indication of the size of the crop beneath. Our outdoor plants produced a 20.2kg crop along with 9.7kg from our sacks from 1 kg of seed potatoes purchased for £1.68.