Salad/new potatoes

Charlottes are lovely salad potatoes.
You can put them in anytime now, as soon as you buy them, you don't have to chit them

Last year tried Anya and they were fantastic; small, very good taste and ultra thin skins. What's more, because they are small if you get the seed by weight you get twice as many in the packet as other varieties.

try international kidney [mmmmmmmmmmmmmm]
they are the ones that [some] people buy in the
supermarkets labled as jersey royals

Charlottes.  They seem to be the only new potatoe doesn't get bored into by wireworm/ slugs nor scabby.  They come out perfect!

Ooooooooooooer! I planted all my potatoes at the same time, first earlys, second earlys and main crop (only 3 potatoes each in containers mind you!). They are now all coming up at the same time - does that mean they will all harvest at the same time? Should I have staggered the planting?

(Thinks ........... must wear my glasses when reading instructions...........)

NO PANIC...........planting all at once is fine Earlies, 2nds and main crops all take progressively longer to harvest date, so they know when they are ready.
appx 12 weeks from planting for earlies and appx 22 weeks for mains, 2nds somewhere in the middle

Frost is forecast, at least the temperature is likely to drop quite a bit tonight and we have already had a thunderstorm. So I had to come up with some way of protecting my spuds as I cannot earth them up any more as they are in containers.

They are now tucked up in bed for the night - I found some large plastic plant pots and placed them over the sprouting spuds, earthed up any little shoots, and covered the lot with a folded flannelette sheet as I don't have any fleece. that way the shoots are protected and won't get squashed by the sheet.

I am sure you have all thought of this before and are rolling your eyes, but I am feeling quite chuffed with myself (as a newbie to this) for thinking up such a solution. Lets just hope it works then!!!

I knew about the newspaper trick, but some of these shoots are now quite tall and bushy. Besides - we have visiting cats who have a tendency to walk over everything, so hopefully the pots will keep them safe.