Bonus Potatoes

Bonus spuds - a mix of Charlotte and King Edward

Whenever you plant potatoes, there's a chance that you won't quite dig them all up. The brassicas bed this year was the potato bed 2 years ago. While digging it over, I dug up enough spuds for a dinner. Bonus!

From checking back through older posts in this blog, these spuds are a mix of Charlotte (salad potatoes) and King Edwards (maincrop) - they were found at opposite ends of the bed and I kept records of what was planted where. I suppose I should really have thought to keep the two varieties separate when I dug them out, but it won't make any difference now, they'll all get eaten this week!

Last year's potato bed is this year's salad / legume bed. I've only dug up half the potatoes from this bed so far.

Potato bed - King Edwards & Desiree

I've also uncovered the potato bed and sacks of spuds. The spuds are looking good. The weather forecast yesterday didn't show any risks of frost, so I removed the sheeting that was covering them. Today the weather forecast has changed and is showing temperatures could be down to 4C tonight, so I'll pop down and recover the spuds tonight.


The pots of Swift were planted 12 weeks ago. According to various websites, they should be ready in anything from 60 days to 100 days. That's only likely to happen in ideal growing conditions.

Potatoes in sacks. Green sacks planted Feb, white Apr

Our Swifts were started in the greenhouse but had to move outside to make room for more in the greenhouse. It's been pretty cold over the last few weeks, so I'll give them a bit longer. In any case, we're not in any hurry for them - we have plenty of others to use, plus half a bed of spuds to dig up.

Must remember that the white sacks are salad potatoes so won't take very long. Guess we'll be eating a lot of salads this summer anyway!