Potato Nicola

One of our favourites with its buttery flavour. Yellowy flesh. Excellent for mashing and gnocchi and good for boiling, chips and roasting.

*You will need to put the potatoes through a ‘Chitting’ process. This is an old Horticultural process where we encourage the seed potatoes to sprout roots before planting. Doing this will help guarantee the success of your future crop.
Do this as soon as you purchase your seed potatoes.

How to Chit Potatoes: 
Take your tubers (seed potatoes) and space them out and store in a cool area. Within a week or two, white roots will begin to sprout. Allow the roots to reach at least 2cm in length before planting out into the garden. Handle them carefully as the roots are fragile and can be broken easily.

Planting: Plant before the last frost. From mid-June to August. 

Planting Depth: Plant tubers in a small ditch, 15-20cm deep and then cover with 30-40cm of mulch and humus-rich soil. As new shoots appear, keep mounding more mulch or organic matter to exclude their shoots from the light. Make a hill around where the seed potato (tubers) are planted. If shoots are exposed to frost, protective measures need to be in place as their young shoots are sensitive to these conditions. Once the risk of the last frost has past allow the shoots to emerge.

Harvest: 60 – 110 days after the last frost. Once the shoots have flowered and foliage begins to die back to soil level, cut the foliage down and leave the potatoes to rest for 2-3 weeks prior to digging up. This allows the skins to harden for better storage.