There has been a slight change of plans to the class following GIY book. I have had to do the work alone but I will take lots of photos to ensure that the class can see what is happening to their plants.
I collected the potatoes/spuds that were happily chitting on the press in our classroom. Using the tubs and peat, kindly given to us by Frank in Dundrum Nurseries, the potatoes were planted 15cm deep with the chitted eyes pointing up. They were watered well and inspected by Bella the cat, placed in a sheltered south facing spot, awaiting return to school.
Our potatoes are the 'Earlies' variety. This means that they should be planted around St. Patricks day and they will be then ready for harvest in fourteen weeks, in June. Ideally they should be 25cm apart but we are squeezing a few more into our tub, we will have 21 hungry bodies to feed, or more because we promised some to Ms. O Dwyer and Charlie!
The tubs are not yet full of soil as we need to leave room for earthing up. This is when we draw up soil around the stem (also called the haulm). Since potatoes grow along the stem the more of it buried beneath the soil, the more spuds you get. Earthing up is also important to keep out the light as spuds would go green with too much light and they can be toxic to eat.
You can try this at home using a black bag instead of tubs and any potatoes from the end of a bag that may be chitting, the only difference will be that they may be Maincrop variety and you will have to wait longer to make your chips. Maincrop need eighteen weeks in the ground before harvesting. Or you could drop into Dundrum Nurseries. I'm sure they have some seed potatoes for sale. Happy planting!
