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Potatoes - plant different varieties together or separate?
davesaat
Posts: 15
in Fruit & veg
Hi everyone,
I'm going to get an allotment, so i'm starting the plan for it. As part of my crop rotation, i'm looking to grow potatoes, however I would like to know if it is better to either:
A) Plant different crops in separate beds OR
Plant different crops mixed up (eg. Main-Early-Main-Early etc in every bed)
What i'm trying to find out is would the additional space (and soil) provided by pulling up the early cropping potatoes help the main crop be greater?
Thanks.
0
Posts
I'd plant them in separate rows/blocks. Anything else is just too complicated - I like to keep my vegetable gardening as straightforward as possible. There's enough complexity in the rest of life
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Why would you think that planting potatoes which will be dug up at different times should be planted together it just makes no sense and would make a hard job even harder. Plant all the potatoes in the same bed but in different rows example three rows of first earlies to be cropped at the end of june, three rows of second earlies to be cropped at the end of july, three rows of maincrop to be cropped at the end of August. Leave 60cm between the rows of first earlies and 75cm between the rows of seconds and mains.
thanks for all the tips.
i was trying to think of ways to save space, yet make the ground more productive, as i was looking to get a half size allotment. however the wife has now decided that she will help, and would rather i get a full size one, so happy days
I've just dug up three 4m rows of potatoes it took roughly 1/2 an hour for each row and I will now go over the area again tomorrow to make sure that I haven't missed any as last year I seem to have missed loads which came up this year in all of the wrong places, namely in between rows of carrots where I couldn't get at to remove them. Strangely when I dug the volunteer potatoes as we call them they were better than some of the ones that were grown from certified seed potatoes planted this spring it makes me wonder if it isn't a good idea to keep some of the smaller potatoes back to plant next year instead of buying fresh seed potatoes. Anyhow as I said it took roughly ½ hour to dig each row and I dread to think how long it would have taken if I had to sort each row between early and main crop potatoes digging some up and leaving others without disturbing them.