Grow Your Own: Potatoes

Lesson 4: Harvesting Early Potatoes

Flower Power
There's a reason you're looking out for flowers on your early potatoes. The arrival of fully opened flowers is your cue to make an exploratory excavation! This is usually around three months after planting. Approach the plant from the side and carefully lift the tubers with a fork. If you have a fork with flat tines, use it. Otherwise, go gently, trying not to disturb the tubers until you've worked out how big they are.

Salad Spuds
With luck, you should have a lovely crop of new potatoes – an ideal accompaniment to a summer salad. If the tubers are still too small, leave them a little longer. As a rule, don't harvest more early potatoes than you need for your next meal. These spuds taste so much better when they're straight out of the earth. They also lack the thicker skins of maincrop potatoes so they don't keep as well as their more robust companions.

Routine Maintenance
If you're growing 2nd early and maincrop potatoes, don't neglect them in your excitement over your tasty early harvest. Sticking to a regular earthing up routine, for example, will help ward off potato blight, a serious disease that can destroy an entire crop and strikes during cool, wet summers. Pinch off maincrop flowers to encourage bigger tubers.