“Secrets Of Success For A Healthy Potato Harvest”

It's likely that once you've enjoyed a few meals using your freshly harvested home-grown spuds, you may have more than you know what to do with. A few simple tips will help you maximise your crop and store them for use in the months to come.

Dig up Potatoes before slug damage becomes a problem. Leave them out to dry for two to three hours before storing. Only store healthy tubers in hessian sacks or well-ventilated, dark boxes.

When lifting potatoes always check and remove even the smallest potato tubers as these will grow next year and come up among other crops.

Prevent Potato blight control by removing blighted potato plants and placing them in the rubbish. Do not put on the compost heap, as the disease could easily be spread to other areas of the garden. The tubers of blighted plants can still be harvested. Don't forget to keep watering late potatoes that are still growing.

Once you have safely stored this years crop you can start working on next years - now is the perfect time to start!

Simply allow you tubers to "Chit" on a cool but frostfree windowsill for several weeks allowing the shoots to grow and develop.

When the Chits are around 2cm they are ready to plant outside from March Onwards or from January if you keep them frost free.