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Old 27-06-2010, 05:39 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Ian B[_2_] Ian B[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2010
Posts: 105
Default More On My Potatoes

Sorry to go on about them again. To recap; there are two varieties which in
my stupidity I forgot what they are. I was certain the ones on the right of
the bed were Nicola, but the flowers are wrong for that, sort of pale
violet. The ones on the left of the bed have white flowers however.

But I just had a brainstorm and am now pretty certain the non-Nicolas may be
Charlottes. That would fit the violent flowers, so I've got my ends of the
bed mixed up.

I lifted two of the violet-flowered ones yesterday and got about 500g of
small, very tasty, spuds off them. Today I lifted some of the white flowered
possibly-nicolas and there were very few spuds of a significant size, in
fact off four plants I got only 16 spuds, about 400g in total, which is
disappointing. But there were a fair few very tiny little proto-spuds.

Looking at the web, if my attempts to reconstruct my memory regarding
varieties are correct, they are both actually "second earlies", not "first
earlies". If so, have I lifted them too early, and should I leave the rest
for a few more weeks? Is there anything I can do to encourage more of a
yield at this late stage? Yesterday's possibly-charlottes were very nice,
and I'm hoping today's perhaps-nicolas will be too, but I was rather hoping
for a few more per plant than I've got.


Ian