Tuesday 9 July 2013

What’s In a Potato Top

Monday was another fine day although there was a little bit of cloud at times and it wasn't quite as hot.

On the plot we've been comparing the tops of our early potatoes Vales Emerald and Swift. Both were planted on 15 April 2013 but Vales Emerald has grown much stronger than Swift leading us to think that Vales Emerald would produce by far the larger crop.

This was how the crops looked just before we decided to harvest one root of each variety to satisfy our curiosity. Each variety has had 84 growing days.
The harvest from each root wasn't too different weight wise with Vales Emerald yielding 0.642kg and Swift 0.509kg. The taste test is still to come but clearly the amount of tops on potatoes isn't much of a guide as to what’s below ground.

The ground the potatoes came out of was very dry. I’m sure with a little bit more rainfall over the past month the harvest would have increased the considerably. The upside is that because it’s so dry there isn't any slug damage.

Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Posted by Martyn at 09:17

2 comments:

  1. Jo9 July 2013 at 10:52

    I've just done a post about my potatoes and said exactly the same thing, you never know what you're going to get by the foliage. I haven't harvested any potatoes yet this year, though I'm hoping that I'll get my first taste at the weekend, I can't wait.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Martyn9 July 2013 at 13:22

      I like the anticipation of digging up our first potatoes each year. we tested out the flavour of Vales Emerald last night so it's the turn of Swift tonight.

      Delete

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