Grow Your Own Magazine

New to the site, havent posted before. Sorry if doing it wrong.
Can anyone help - can I use the compost from the compost bag that I have grown my radishes in for my potatoes. I am interested in growing potatoes in buckets etc. When should I put the potatoes in, can I do it now??

Thanks to all/any who reply.

I should think it will be ok to use the same compost. Potatoes are split up into first and second earlies and maincrops. The earliest you can plant without a greenhouse is around late March. Growing in buckets in a greenhouse you should be able to plant in february with an extra early variety.

Hope this helps

Welcome to the vine kwa50. Where do you garden? You can edit your user profile to include your location, county will do fine and it helps with advice as the UK has such varied conditions. The used compost should be OK, you may need to add a little general purpose fertiliser such as Growmore. Old gardeners always used to plant their seed potatoes on Good Friday, so late March/early April. If you have the heat you could plant now in tubs, but the light levels are too low for good results (leaves need good light to produce food for the plants). If I were you I would wait till spring.

Welcome to the vine kwa50!

The compost may be a bit devoid of nutrients by now but that can be sorted by adding Blood fish and bone meal nearer planting time. Once the flowers have set on spuds, a high potassium liqiud tomato feed or something like comfrey tea will encourage the tubers to swell!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Thank you so much for all of your much needed help. This is such a great idea.

Hello Kwa50 and welcome to the Vine. I would go with Snadger there and say the compost will be a bit spent, but it will do fine as a medium as long as you add some feeding to it. The top growth on potatoes is not frost hardy and does need reasonable light for the potatoes to do well - so this is probably not a good time to go for it.

Last year I planted potatoes in buckets in February and got good potatoes at the beginning of May - but they were in a very well sheltered south facing sight. Good luck with your potatoes. What else are you growing ?

Here's some of the potatoes. The variety is Cherie.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Well, I have a small greenhouse so have started broad bean, garlic, onion and peas, At the weekend I am going to plant the beans outside. I only have grow bags at the moment as we are restructuring the garden and putting in raised flower beds to give me more space for veggies.

Sounds fantastic! Spread the word! Everyone should know how easy it can be to grow. How big a space are you using?

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Vegmonkey and the Mrs. - vegetable gardening in a small space in Cheltenham at www.vegmonkey.co.uk

They should all do well for you Kwa 50. Your garlic could go outdoors - it's perfectly hardy and does well in containers. Here's some I planted outdoors in a container last november.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.