When to harvest my potatoes

[snohare]

Don't ask me about furtling, but "pootling" is the art of sucking up biological specimens by sucking (not too hard ) on a glass pipette. Usually pond life, but sometime bacteria, so I think I prefer to furtle... A much safer way to "suck it and see" !

[IanM]

Well I finally broke today and had a furtle. In fact I went further and slid on lot out from their growbag. I got enough for tea (and they were lovely) but managed to get the rest back in the bag. I saw a few smaller ones but sort of expected the bottom of the bag to be full of larger potatoes than at the top. It appears I was wrong. Do the potatoes grow from the top down then I wonder?

Ian

[Lemon]

that's odd. when I've dug up spuds before, I find then deeper I dig, the bigger they get! The weenies I found, where the ones on the top.

Can't wait til spuds are ready....that excitement of digging for spud!

[Creemteez]

Sorry, don't be confused, furtling is a recognised word whilst pootling is just something I made up.

In the Teez household, "Pootle" is a real word. It's a verb, "to pootle about" - ie. to travel carelessly, without hurry. To meander about your lottie doing little bits and pieces, maybe having a furtle in the process.

[msflocks]

I had exactly the same issue with mine, no flowers but foliage dying down. But with 12 large pots I wasnt too worried if I got none from the first. Tipped the whole lot out and got a large bowl full (34) to be precise, some were pretty tiny, but it gave me an idea as to how they were all going. left the next one for two weeks and got a few larger. hope this helps
x

[Farmer_Gyles]

i dug up a row of earlies from the allotment on monday - one 13ft row gave me a carrier bag full of new potatoes - can't remember what variety but they look like normal salad spuds we can get in sainsburys - the leaves were dying back and i've got loads more spuds at home and on the allotment so doesn't matter if i was a little bit early digging them up - that row is now planted with courgettes and cucumbers that had been struggling in large pots and needed to be in the ground ......

[Alan Farmer]

Tried Swift for the first time this year, with plastic over them for about the first month. Not very productive and I believe inferior flavour. I previously used Arran Pilot