"JB" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 09:23:12 +0100, "michael adams"
wrote:


wrote in message
roups.com...
* Should I prune the green down to a single green root?

... the usual recommendation is to rub all but the four
strongest shoots out.

Though for earlies and news you may want to leave more shoots which
should in principle give more but smaller spuds.

....

The less shoots you leave on each tuber, the quicker they develop
I believe.

The point about earlies is that they should never get the chance
to reach too a big a size, by the time you come to pick them in
any case.

i.e when they're big enough, then they should be picked.

It all depends on planting distances as well. If you have a
sackful of seed and only a small garden then its pointless
not rubbing out at last some of the shoots. Otherwise they'd
simply crowd one another out. Whereas by leaving only one or two
shoot per tuber you'd get stronger, quicker developing individual
plants.

Lates are often chitted so as to develop plenty of foliage early on,
on the plants, before any possibility of blight. And the tubers
can be lifted that much earlier, if only a matter of days, before
slugs start doing their worst.

The trick with potatoes at both ends of the season, between
frosts at one end, and blight and slugs at the other is to have them
in the ground for as short a time as possible. If there's room, then in
theory chitted tubers widely spaced should give the best results


michael adams

....