Kay Easton pushed briefly to the front of
the queue on Fri, 22 Nov 2002 19:24:41 +0000, and nailed this to the
shed door:

^ In article , Paul Taylor
^ writes

^ Most books I read on planting pototoes say they need earthing up -
^ however as I only have limited space I want to plant the rows closer
^ together which means I can no longer earth them up. To counter this I am
^ considering planting the seed pototoes deeper. This seems to make sense
^ to me (but I'm not a vastly experianced gardner!). Could anyone please
^ comment on this as a reasonable sensible technique - or do spuds really
^ have to be earthed up.

^ The idea seems to be that the potatoes make their tubers near the
^ surface. You then earth them up which encourages them to make more above
^ the original layer, and stops the top ones being exposed to the light
^ and going green.
^
^ therefore, a better bet would be to plant at the normal depth, but try
^ to spread a layer of compost over the whole bed (avoiding the plants!)
^ at the time when you'd normally earth up - a bit fiddly.

That's what I did last year, when I was still relatively tight for
growing room on my allotment (I am hoping to give the other half the
same TLC this winter that the other half got last winter). It seemed
to work very well. I had much less bother from slugs as well - could
just be coincidence, but I wonder if the compost being a relatively
free-draining layer compared to the soil discourages them from taking
up residence in it?

^ Or you could just not bother to earth up - you'll still get a reasonable
^ crop.

Also true. I used the compost partly because I am still not too sure
at what stage in the growing season earthing up should be done - so I
always leave it too late and then panic! But previously I have not
bothered and still done OK.

As regards growing in tire stacks, earthing up as the tires get put
on, I tried it once or twice after seeing a program on TV where they
appeared to end up with the whole thing close-packed with spuds - and
I can only say my experience was so disappointing that I would take a
lot of convincing to try it again. Evidently I did something wrong but
I don't know what.

One more thing on the subject of potatoes - I am keen to solicit
speculation on the following observation. We are keeping our potato
crop in a cupboard under the stairs, in proper hessian potato sacks,
and are working our way slowly through them. Hadn't used any for a
while, then opened up the Arran Victory sack a couple of days ago, and
found that virtually every tuber was sporting a couple of shoots up to
6 or 7 inches long. Curiously, the 2nd earlies (whose variety escapes
me at the moment) are all still slumbering peacefully. At the moment,
my least implausible theory is that it is cool enough for the 2nd
earlies, but the Arran Victory tubers are genetically acclimatized to
cooler Scottish conditions, and would perhaps prefer to be kept in the
shed ...

Andy

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Look after the sins of write-commission,
and the sins of read-omission will take care of themselves.