Potato experiments - boring "lab book" update for future reference

Last year's potato harvest was so rubbish we were almost tempted to grow no potatoes at all. That said we have heard of people getting better harvests from potatoes grown in tubs or bags, so decided to do some experiments.

So, this years potato planting was only 11 seed potatoes -

• Charlotte x 3
• Rocket x 2
• Lady Christl x 3
• Swift x 3

These are all 1st / 2nd earlies. We had a couple of potato planter bags and decided to extend the experiment to a couple of "bags for life" from the supermarket and an Ikea bag:

The potato bags are a motley assortment - three different sizes. The bags were just over half-filled with a mix of allotment soil, compost from the raised bed and well rotted manure, with some chicken manure pellets for good measure. We planted 3 x charlotte in Ikea:

then 2 x rocket in the tall spud bag:

then 2 x lady christl in low spud bag #1, one in orange carrier:

then finally 2 x swift in spud bag #2, one in blue Tesco carrier:

These were obviously all covered with a couple of inches of soil, but we left some space to further earth them up as they grow. Theory states harvesting should be trivial - tip the bag and pull - we shall see...