I‘m still digging up potatoes from last year’s crop. They’re giving themselves away by starting to sprout, and shooting long stems and thick green leaves up through the soil.
It’s a bit galling pulling them all up as they would have made good eaters if they hadn’t started shooting, and I can’t help wondering how many new potatoes they’d deliver for us this year if we left them where they are.
We can’t do that at the front half of the plot as they’d interfere with this year’s strawberries and artichokes. The back half of the plot, though, is a possibility. I had earmarked that for French beans, but they’re not exactly putting on a great performance yet. I started them off in the greenhouse a couple of weeks back, but so far there’s nothing peeping up over the surface of the pots.
So, potatoes stay or potatoes go? They should be fine to eat as they were all grown from seed last year, so the left-overs should be as good as the originals when they bare their own offspring and they shouldn’t poison the soil.
The trouble is, by leaving them in there to crop again I’ll no doubt end up with the same problem next year, with the leftovers of the leftovers cropping again, for the third time. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve gone back to growing potatoes in bags this year.
Sadly, then, I’ve resigned myself to digging them out. It feels a bit of a waste.
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I had exactly the same issue at the weekend. In the end I dug up a couple of plants and found a load of small’ish spuds which seemed perfect to use as new potatoes (even though technically they came from last years main crop) so we had some for dinner and they were lovely. So I plan on just harvesting them like that over the next week or so…
I have a few errant potatoes that have been appearing over the plot – but they are between other stuff that I have planted so I have had to just hoe the top off them otherwise they would swamp the other stuff. As for the compost heap, that is full of potatoes!