I planted my Salad Potatoes, Pink Fir Apple, today. They have been happily chitting on the kitchen windowsill for about a month. Ideally, I would chit them in the shed near a window but the mice can’t be trusted after they swiped my heritage varieties a few years ago.
I planted them about 10cm deep, and covered them over with a small mound. I only did one row this year. I was tempted not to grow Potatoes at all as they do take up a lot of room in a small garden. But I couldn’t resist putting in some Salad Potatoes so that when the Broadbeans and Spring Onions come in I can make my seasonal Potato Salad recipe.
I’ve been harvesting my New Potatoes for a few weeks now – later than last year I’m sure. But they still taste amazing! I didn’t get to grow my saved seed Potatoes that were given to me last year. Why? Because mice ate them! Can you believe it?
It makes me laugh that I wrote this post “How to Save Seed Potatoes” last September and then failed to actually save any. I saved the Potatoes over the winter in a sealed tin box, like a good little girl. Then in February I took them out to chit them in the potting shed. Little did I know that the mice were lying in wait thinking, ‘ooh she’s putting out some juicy snacks for us, let’s wait till she’s gone and eat the lot!’.
By the next day there was not a Potato in sight, nor a mouse. So much for purple Potatoes huh? Next year the cat lives in the potting shed while I chit my Potatoes. He doesn’t know it yet but I’m sure he’ll like it.
I’ve started to chit my Potatoes. As you can see I’ve got a small clutch of a standard variety of first earlies (Rocket) and two rather unusual varieties (Congo and Highland Burgundy Red). The smaller seed Potatoes were given to me while I was on a pruning course last year.
I put them in an airtight container and placed them in the potting shed all winter. They’ve saved well so I’m hoping to have some really unusual Potatoes in this year’s harvest.
The problem is, I was a bit worried that they might cross-pollinate and I would end up with a large batch of darkish or purply-red Potatoes instead of ones that are true to one variety. So I did some research.
It turns out that Potato flowers have both male and female parts and so are very likely to pollinate themselves. I watched a video on how to create a new Potato variety by cross-pollination and it looked like it was pretty difficult to do actually. So the likelihood of the bees managing it for me is very slim. Plus, I suppose people plant three, four, sometimes five varieties of Potato on one allotment sometimes and you don’t necessarily get cross-pollination, do you?
So, I’m resolved to give all three varieties a go. I might plant them separately, away from each other just to be on the safe side. But I think I should be okay.
Does anyone have any more data on this? Is there a definitive yes or no answer?
