If you love the taste of new potatoes – and who doesn’t – you’ll want to extend the season with a second planting now. KG editor Steve Ott has some simple top tips for sure-fire spud success

VEG AT A GLANCE

Most of us plant our potatoes in the spring, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that the potato season was all over, bar the harvesting. However, one of the many reasons for growing your own potatoes, and the main one for many, is the wonderful flavour to be had from just lifted ‘new’ tubers. It’s a unique flavour that is highly prized, yet more and more gardeners are learning that it doesn’t have to be the preserve of an early spring-planted crop. You can get the same flavour from planting some ‘second cropping’ tubers.

Second cropping potatoes are simply early, quick-growing varieties that have been cold stored by the suppliers to prevent chitting (sprouting) and you can be experiencing the same wonderful new potato flavour by planting these now. Within 12 weeks, or less, they will be ready to harvest and by storing your late-planted tubers, you can experience that fresh-dug flavour at Christmas, too.