Earthing up potatoes after the first time

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zestymordant

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Earthing up potatoes after the first time
« on: June 15, 2012, 14:05 »
My potatoes seem to be shooting up a lot, so much that I've had to dig from other plots to get the soil to earth them up! I think I might be going too far though, as I read that the potatoes only grow at the bottom. How much should I be earthing up at this stage? Here's a few pics:

This is the top plot and has already been earthed up a bit, you can see the trenches that have been dug. Should I continue to earth these up?



This is the bottom plot, I've earthed these up twice now. They were slower to grow than the other plot, probably because I didn't dump a box of SoP on these. Any good?



And here's some I went crazy on yesterday as tired of constantly earthing up! Was this overkill?



Thanks :)

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savbo

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Re: Earthing up potatoes after the first time
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2012, 14:18 »
no spudmeister but bottom one looks a bit OTT. The plants need to have some foliage on show to make the food to make the spuds surely?

earthing up (once frosts are passed) is to protect against upper tubers going green - if you furtle and there are no spuds in top couple of inches, then not a lot of point in earthing up is there?  :unsure:

sav

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Kleftiwallah

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Re: Earthing up potatoes after the first time
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2012, 16:29 »

Just keep a bucket or two of soil to hand to cover any spuds showing through.   Cheers,    Tony.
I may be growing OLD, but I refuse to grow UP !

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zestymordant

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Re: Earthing up potatoes after the first time
« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2012, 20:40 »
no spudmeister but bottom one looks a bit OTT. The plants need to have some foliage on show to make the food to make the spuds surely?

earthing up (once frosts are passed) is to protect against upper tubers going green - if you furtle and there are no spuds in top couple of inches, then not a lot of point in earthing up is there?  :unsure:

sav

Yeah, I only realised the thing about the potatoes growing at the bottom a couple of days ago... until then I thought they grew all the way up  :wacko: hence the overkill!

And Tony, cheers for the soil idea. Glad I don't have to do any more blooming earthing up!


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