News ways with potatoes

Discovered a forum on the 'Grow Your Own' magazine website today, which is great especially for newbies to veg growing.

I found lots of tips for growing potatoes, including in bags and buckets, which is what I'll have to do as I don't have enough room in my raised bed for all my tubers.

Anyway, here is a summary of the suggestions. Thanks to all the people who made these suggestions in their forum posts:

Planting in the ground

Dig a trench half a spade deep. Lay the seed potatoes in the trench 12 inches apart for earlies. Then cover the trench and earth up now to roughly 9 inches above the ground level. Flatten the sides of the earthing up with the back of the spade to make it look neat and make sure that there are no holes where the daylight can get through. Job done. No need to do anything else before you dig up lovely new potatoes apart from watering. 24 inches between rows.

Re-using compost bags

Grow first earlies in old compost bags of 40 litres or more. Turn the bag inside out so the black part is on the outside. This means the sun warms up the soil better. Put 3 ins compost in the bag followed by two ins of manure. Add 2 ins garden soil. Place 2 or 3 tubers in depending on size of bag. Put 4 ins of soil/compost on top of potatoes and water well. Top up with compost each time haulms show through about 4 or 5 ins high until you've reached the top of the bag. Then just wait for the harvest.