Planting my Salad Potatoes

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.

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11 Comments on “Planting my Salad Potatoes”

  3. Yes…very alien looking! We almost gave potatoes a miss this year too. In the end we caved in and had to buy seed potatoes from a local garden centre…they don’t look brilliant and certainly don’t have the lovely chits as shown in your piccies. Fingers crossed they’ll do ok though.

  4. Nice photos. I too have limited space but this will be the third year that I’ve grown salad potatoes in bags. You start off with the seeds in six inches of soil and build it up as the holms begin to grow. I plant five seeds to a bag and get out enough to eat in the late summer / early autumn. I’ve used Belle de Fonteney (excuse the spelling). This has lower yields, but boy do they taste good.
    Don’t know if this helps, but bags seem like a good method if you have limited space. However, I guess it’s too late for you to try this year. 15 seeds produces enough potatoes for two plus my six year old niece, who loves them.

  5. Great reminder to get my Pink Fir Apple potatoes planted up. Like you, I decided not to grow potatoes this year because of the space issue (Jerusalem artichokes won out!), but am going to try growing in bags this year for the first time and see how this goes. Loved the photos.

  6. Lovely! I feel that even in the smallest of gardens it is worth growing potatoes – I love the feeling of digging them up at the end, like you’re discovering gold. We’re planting ours this weekend into a stack of tyres as we don’t have any garden bed space.

  8. You can’t beat new potatoes come the summer. I’m trying some out in polypots to save space in the beds.

  9. We have the opposite problem with regard to space and potatoes! Moved house last year and the new garden is three quarters of an acre of uncultivated land. I’m putting in loads of potatoes as I have read it is a great way to deal with slightly weedy, stoney soil. And of course I’m an Irish girl and we really love our spuds!

  10. Oh they do! They look so like little purple moles! I’ve got a really small garden and grew tatties in it for the first time last year. They turned horrible sticky, lumpy, clay into lovely fibrous earth as well as tasting sublime. I planted three in a bag yesterday but have loads more chitting at the moment waiting to go in the ground. Ohhhh, I can’t wait to get them going!