Over 2 years ago we had a ride out up the tunnel road from Glengariff to the Kingdom that is the county of Kerry. We had seen a carboot sale advertised online that was being held in Killorglin. The place where wen to the Puck fair last year, do you remember?
Any road or anyway. I purchased 6 growing bags for 5 Euros. The pleasant lady told us they she had grown some fine new potatoes in them but she no longer wished to grow them any more. So we bought them and brought them back to West Cork.
Here's a photo I took yesterday of this years new potatoes stalks pushing through. I will cover them up with some of my homemade compost and let them grow some more.
People often say they have no room to grow potatoes. This a good way of getting a few new potatoes meals. You can keep them in a greenhouse, polytunnel, conservatory or a shed with a window. You can even carry them outside when the last frosts have gone.
Anyone else grown or grow their spudatoes this way? Like I often say on here I have grown them in a big plant pot on a windowsill in an upstairs flat window and I once grew them in the backyard in a drum from my Mum's old twin tub washing machine.
Potatoes could be scarce and expensive this year after the terrible wet Autumn, Winter and now Spring. You can't beat homegrown and home cooked new potatoes.
My 2 bags were started in the greenhouse and now are outside, planted at different times, I have done the final addition of compost, and wait until they are ready to harvest, the second bag is just popping up for the first time. I soaked and planted some peas over the weekend in a big pot.
ReplyDeleteThe bags are great aren't they Marlene? I will top mine up today with some topsoil I am using to make more raised beds It's actually not raining today- unbelievable!
ReplyDeleteI use recycled supermarket flower buckets for potatoes.stand them on a closed ended gutter with a net pot through the bottom of the bucket (saves time watering,) each pot producs a meal for 3 or 4, when the potatoes are small and enough for 2 days as they get bigger. you can also lift the root ball out of the bot, harvest what you need and replant foralater crop. Been doing this for 8 years now, I like it
DeleteKathy
That is clever and so resourceful Kathy. Are you close to harvesting them?
ReplyDeleteThe best potatoes are those fresh little ones smothered in Irish butter!
ReplyDeleteYes Linda. A fresh new potato can be peeled with your finger or thumb nail. We often have fresh mint with ours.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once told me they grew their spuds in a stack of old tyres - each time the plant poked its head up they would add an other tyre and more straw/FYM etc. They reckoned (I never saw it) that this forced the plant to grow spuds all the way up the stack. I never had success at trying to force spuds to grow that way - possibly because I let the tops get too big before |I tried to fill them in with the next layer upwards.
ReplyDeleteHi Tigger's Mum. I think the idea came from Bob Flowerdew and his "All Muck And Magic" organic gardening programme on Channel 4 in the eighties. I read somewhere that there is cadmium in the steel in the tyres which is not very good for us. If you look at my recent polytunnel photo you will see Daffodils growing in a old tyre. I suppose an old barrel would do for potatoes if yo kept topping it up with compost or soil? The growing bags are not very expensive and you get years out of them.
ReplyDeleteFound this online about trace metals - https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/b1d9d1eb-afcb-4729-ae31-950e13872d1d#:~:text=Cadmium%20can%20be%20highly%20toxic,trace%20amounts%20if%20at%20all.
DeleteThanks Tigger's Mum. I looked up Cadmium in tyres and tires and it said there is only trace elements. But I don't think I will grow my potatoes in tyres.
DeleteI do love fresh home grown new potatoes. Nothing finer.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. There will be a shortage and they will be expensive after all the rain JayCee. I keep telling people to grow some this year.
ReplyDeleteHe's going on about vegetables again! What happened to the beer ads?
ReplyDeleteThe trouble with seed potatoes is that they are in bags of three times as many as you want.
If I was in a circus Tasker I would be called a one trick pony. WI planted a sack of them and then we bought a couple of bags of varieties we had never tried before.
ReplyDeleteMaybe next year I will have a go at growing new potatoes like that. I hate to admit it but with the gout and the rain and everything, I have become quite lazy.
ReplyDeleteI have sympathy with with your gout YP. I felt the same when I had badly blistered soles of my feet for weeks. I have read that if you drink 8 pints of water a day it flushes out the uric acid.
DeleteI googled polycrub after I left here yesterday and that is a fine looking "building" I hope one day you can get one.
ReplyDeleteThe ones in the Shetland Islands look bomb proof and can stand up to anything that is thrown at them River. One day perhaps?
ReplyDelete