On 18 Jun 2003 18:10:24 GMT, Nick Maclaren wrote:

In article ,
The Devil's Advocate no spam no rudeness wrote:
I have been gardening for a long time but have never had this before.
None
of the potatoes flowered. Two rows of Maris Peer and two rows of
Pentland
Javelin. They have a very big crop underneath them. I have had a row or
so
before that never flowered but not all of them. I assume that I treated
them
so well that they didn't feel the need to flower. They had a trench of
manure under them and were planted with blood fish and bone fertiliser.
Does
anyone have any other ideas?

The weather. The theory that you had to wait until they flowered
always was based on the fact that the two events of flowering and
producing a crop were roughly simultaneous - in potatoes, they never
were closely linked.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.


There was a short item in New Scientists recently saying that new tests
indicate that stopping the potato plants flowering (by cutting them off)
can produce up to 17% larger crop with better quality spuds. I suppose it's
to do with the energy the plant would use in the flowers being diverted.
Tim.