Grow Your Own Potatoes

The kinds of potatoes you can buy from places like supermarkets, market stalls or garden centres carry much more spores of bacteria and pests than Scottish Seed Potatoes. In addition, non-certified seed often carry PCN eelworm or can be treated with sprout suppressant which will stop your crop from growing properly.

Some of the best varieties to grow at home are Maris Piper and Charlotte potatoes. These are two of the most popular varieties for good reason, they’re great tasting, versatile and have decent resistance to most pests & disease.

First earlies are planted 12″ apart along your drill and the space between drills should be around 24″.

Second earlies and maincrops can be planted 15″ apart with a space of 28″ between the drills.

Frost

Potatoes are sensitive to cold frosts, which damage them in the ground. Even short snaps of colder weather makes seed spuds more susceptible to bruising and possibly later rotting which can quickly spoil a large stored crop.

When it comes to harvesting, gardeners will dig up the potatoes with a long-handled, three-prong “grape” (or graip), i.e. a spading fork, or a potato hook which is similar to the graip but its tines are at a 90 degree angle to the handle. In larger plots, the plow can serve as the fastest implement for unearthing potatoes

Farm grown potato harvesting is normally done with large potato harvesters which scoop everything up, plants, crops and all. This is then transported up an apron chain consisting of steel links several feet wide, which removes some of the earth. The chain deposits into an area where further separation occurs. Different designs use different systems at this point.

The most complex designs use vine choppers and shakers, along with a blower system or “Flying Willard” to separate the spuds from the plant. The result is then usually run past people who continue to sort out plant material, stones, and spoiled potatoes before they are finally sent to a lorry or wagon. Further inspection and separation occurs when the crops are loaded from the field vehicles and moved into warehouse storage.

JBA are the UK’s largest growers and suppliers of seed potatoes with over 100 varieties to choose from including Maris Piper, Desiree and more.