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Apologies if there is another thread about this - I'm sure there was some discussion earlier in the year, but I can't find it.
I decided to try something new this year with my Rocket potatoes. Normally I use bags and plant 3 seed potatoes per bag, but this year I decided to use 30 litre buckets. These seem a little smaller than the standard bags in that they hold slightly less compost.
I had plenty of seed potatoes, so having planted 2 buckets of 3 I decided to do one bucket with 2 potatoes near the bottom, and another on the same day in as near identical conditions as possible, with 2 seed potatoes in the same place as the other bucket, and 2 more much higher up. Both of these last 2 buckets have now been harvested (the ones with 3 in have not).
Results:
2 seed potatoes yielded 3.3lb (1.5kg) of potatoes. Most of these were golf ball sized or larger and there were few really small inedible ones.
4 seed potatoes yielded 3.5lb (1.6kg) of potatoes from the same amount of compost etc. Many of these were smaller than a golf ball, although there were some larger ones. There were a lot of pea sized, inedible ones.
I found this interesting as I was expecting more potatoes in the bucket with 4 seeds, the higher up ones not competing for root space with the lower planted ones. I have watered them diligently, so it is unlikely to be a shortage of water, and indeed the potatoes don't have that dryish texture that you get when potatoes have been very short of water.
The buckets with 3 potatoes each were planted in a different sort of compost (fresh from the hotbin rather than from my recycled bin) and the later buckets were harvested earlier as they were developing spots on the leaves, which the hotbin buckets are not. Because of this difference, the yields from the other buckets probably won't be a fair comparison.
Interested to know if anyone else has a similar or different experience of growing early potatoes in layers in containers like this.
I decided to try something new this year with my Rocket potatoes. Normally I use bags and plant 3 seed potatoes per bag, but this year I decided to use 30 litre buckets. These seem a little smaller than the standard bags in that they hold slightly less compost.
I had plenty of seed potatoes, so having planted 2 buckets of 3 I decided to do one bucket with 2 potatoes near the bottom, and another on the same day in as near identical conditions as possible, with 2 seed potatoes in the same place as the other bucket, and 2 more much higher up. Both of these last 2 buckets have now been harvested (the ones with 3 in have not).
Results:
2 seed potatoes yielded 3.3lb (1.5kg) of potatoes. Most of these were golf ball sized or larger and there were few really small inedible ones.
4 seed potatoes yielded 3.5lb (1.6kg) of potatoes from the same amount of compost etc. Many of these were smaller than a golf ball, although there were some larger ones. There were a lot of pea sized, inedible ones.
I found this interesting as I was expecting more potatoes in the bucket with 4 seeds, the higher up ones not competing for root space with the lower planted ones. I have watered them diligently, so it is unlikely to be a shortage of water, and indeed the potatoes don't have that dryish texture that you get when potatoes have been very short of water.
The buckets with 3 potatoes each were planted in a different sort of compost (fresh from the hotbin rather than from my recycled bin) and the later buckets were harvested earlier as they were developing spots on the leaves, which the hotbin buckets are not. Because of this difference, the yields from the other buckets probably won't be a fair comparison.
Interested to know if anyone else has a similar or different experience of growing early potatoes in layers in containers like this.
Planted 21st April so hopefully I'll know in a few weeks.
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