Now that we are about half way through the growing season, it is a good time to take stock and evaluate the growth of your crops.
Take potatoes for instance. If the growing tubers are showing above the soil line, you need to start to “hill” the potatoes.
Hilling is the process of throwing additional soil over the base of the potato plant to prevent exposing the growing tubers to light which can cause greening.
Potatoes exposed to light causes the development of chlorophyll in the tuber which gives the potato a green colour.
Hilling potatoes also seems to produce more potatoes and this process can continue until harvest.
We also use the “hilling” process in August or early September to protect the plant from an early frost. We’d leave the very tip of the plant exposed to the frosty nights, sometimes even covering the whole plant with soil if the weather forecast called for a heavier frost.
The potatoes survived the night and continued growing thus buying us an extra few weeks of growing time.
My suggestion is to pay particular attention to the weather at the end of August and beginning of September when we often get a clear, cloudless night or two of potential “frosty” weather especially in the outlying areas of Whitehorse.
At this time, the middle to end of July, I’d also recommend giving the potatoes another application of fertilizer. The fertilizer should be placed at the side of the hills of the plants as opposed to the top of the plants.
Avoid a heavy application of manure as manure has been implicated in cases of scab and therefore should be avoided.
Good compost is best to use. On our own soil, we often used a natural potash fertilizer which seems to work well.
Scab is often a problem with potatoes and is caused by soil bacterium that is present in all soils. Scab can be reduced by rotating potato plots with other vegetables and keeping the soil more acidic.
Hollow heart is a condition where the potato has an empty core. Heavy watering after a spell of dry conditions can cause such good growing conditions that the potato grows so fast that a hollow centre forms.
Water consistently.
One of the most often-asked question is whether a potato plants’ lack of flowering affects potato production. It doesn’t.
One of life’s little pleasures is to start “stealing” one or two potatoes from the hills whenever they are large enough to eat. Size can be checked by carefully digging into the side of the hill without damaging too many roots.
Combine fresh baby potatoes with fresh peas and you’ll have a meal fit for a king.
