A Potato Blunder!

It’s been a variable week with some very hot days in the middle of the week before ending the week with some cool, showery and windy conditions. In the middle of the week it was a bit too hot to do much gardening. Wednesday became our hottest day of the year with the late afternoon temperature reaching 29.9°C or 85.8°F

Temperature & Rainfall Records 22 - 28 June 2020

Way back in March we planted up some old recycling crates with potatoes. The hope was to get some nice tasty early potatoes before those grown in the ground outside were ready. We planted two varieties one a trusted favourite Casablanca, and the other was International Kidney. 

08 March 2020

I assumed both these were first early cropping potatoes but never checked up on International Kidney. This variety is known as Jersey Royals providing it's grown in Jersey and they're always one of the first home grown new potatoes in the shops. I assumed therefore that this was a first early variety but if I'd bothered to check up I'd have found out its an early maincrop variety and needs a longer growing season.

This has meant we've had a review of how we will go about harvesting our potatoes on the plot. We planted up one bed with Casablanca and International Kidney as our first earlies with the intention of harvesting these first. Our Casablanca potatoes are now in flower and will soon be ready for harvesting but International Kidney is showing no signs of flowering just yet and will need leaving in the ground longer than we anticipated.

Potato - Casablanca

Luckily, one of the varieties we are growing in our trial bed is Ulster Prince which is a first early variety and so we'll test this out as soon as the flowers start to fade. Like Casablanca, Ulster Prince is just coming into flower in our trial bed of six different varieties.

Potato - Ulster Prince

Our plan was to replant our early potato bed with a crop of dwarf French beans which we will start off in pots at home. If we leave our International Kidney potatoes in for a few extra weeks it might be a bit late for the beans so we are thinking of replanting our early brassica bed up with beans instead. The cauliflowers in this bed are just starting to form heads, the calabrese is harvested and there are only a few Regency cabbages left to harvest so I'm anticipating this bed will be ready to clear in a couple of weeks. Perhaps I should be sowing some beans this week.

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