Potatoes Lifted

Saturday was a beautiful sunny autumnal day but after an overnight low of 3.3°C it’s taken the record of the coldest September day I’ve recorded with an average temperature of only 8.3°C. The previous record was 9.0°C set on 25 September 2010.

The sunshine tempted us down to the plot. It was nice enough to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee with our plot neighbours in the afternoon sunshine. I did manage to finish lifting our potatoes which consisted of a few roots of Winston that I’d been planning to lift for a while but always found something more urgent to do.

 

I managed to harvest a bucket full of Winston’s on the left in the picture above. I really should have lifted them earlier as the delay had given potato devouring creatures more time to enjoy the tasty tubers. Our Winston’s do seem to have been prone to attack from underground pests this year but have still produced a good crop of large tasty potatoes and so will earn themselves a place on the order list for next year.

These are the worst affected and not even worth considering using as most of the potato has been eaten. They have a hollow feel and sound to them when picked up a sure sign that there’s not much useful potato left.

There’s are lots of holes in the eaten potatoes which I’m assuming is mostly slug damage although I didn’t see many slugs as I dug them up. I will now need to keep a check on the stored potatoes and remove any potatoes showing any signs of rotting or other problems.This year’s potato harvest is now complete and, assuming they store okay during the winter months, we’ve enough in store to last us through into next spring.