Last updated
18 February 2012
Quest for the Good Life 
Growing Potatoes is quite simple. It perhaps needs a bit more physical work to prepare the bed and create the planting trench but after that little else is needed.
Rather than going into details here on how to grow them, there are many books and articles on this subject, I want to look how you can get more from your spuds!
Firstly extend your season. By growing early potatoes and main crop you spread your harvest. There are second earlies too but you may not find a huge advantage in growing all types.
As our early potato we grow the salad type “Charlotte”. This is a delicious waxy potato and our favourite new potato.
For main crops, we vary the variety and this year w e are growing “Cara” and “Ambo”.
Now you may have read or been told that you can cut the seed potato tuber in half. Usually on main crop, chitted potatoes you can divide the root into two and make sure a good shoot is on both pieces.
Many suggest allowing the two halves to dry before planting, thus reducing the chance of disease getting into the cuts.
This year I have experimented by doing this method on my earlier Charlottes. Now they were not so well chitted and a lot smaller so I had my doubts as to whether they would even grow. But they did . .
I bought a bag of seed potatoes with 27 tubers in it. The problem was I needed nearly 60 to complete the three rows. By cutting them all in half, I create 54 tubers.
I have just had a count up of plants and all 54 have grown. Now that’s quite a good return on the £3.25 investment in the seed potatoes.
The yields on these potatoes has been really good. There seems to have been no loss due to the way in which I grew them.
Now looking at the economics of it. We have had about 3 months from these potatoes.
Now we don’t eat them everyday. But we do know we would buy at least one small bag,
if not two per week. So this is around £3 per week. So over 3 months that’s £36.
But hang on, remember for you to have £36 to spend on potatoes you have to earn
more than that (tax & NI). It’s more likely you would have to earn £45 -
The important thing is that you can stretch potatoes along way. You can also grow them in different containers
So even if you have a balcony or small patio, you can grow some new potatoes.
Read up on varieties and pick the ones you would like to eat. The Potato Council has a lot of excellent variety information for you to read.
We have now moved on to the main crop and for this we chose Cara. What a crop it has been so far.
