Potatoes in Planters

The Potty Gardener

The time has come, I can no longer tolerate their mischievous presence on my kitchen window sill. If they have eyes on stalks that grow by the day who knows what else they might develop? I certainly cannot risk the possibility that they may someday be able to talk and expose my fifty shades of green lifestyle! So the potatoes are going under….well some of them anyway, the rest have been relegated to the windowsill at the back of the larder to chit behind a closed door. Grandpa Haxnicks advised that I shouldn’t sow them all at once unless I want to harvest them all at once and have a glut of potatoes, and then I would have to eat them all at once and have a gut full of potatoes and end up looking like a potato, not one of my ambitions, so I will sow one planter at a time.

Job done. I chose the 4 seed potatoes with the most prying eyes, about 2.5cm long and buried (I think the kinder word is planted) them in a potato planter on top of 10cm and under 5cm of multi- purpose compost. When their prying shoots appear through the soil I will bury them further!

EasyFleece Tunnels warming the soil

I went to visit Grandpa Haxnicks this week hoping for a cup of tea and some gardening gossip (mostly vegetable based rivalry with his neighbour), only to be put to work preparing some of his raised vegetable beds for the growing season ahead. We removed all the weeds, dug it over and then put out some EasyFleece tunnels to help warm the soil presumably so that he can get his growing season well under way before Mr Perfect Parsnips next door.

Growing without the Garden

Grandpa Haxnicks would like to introduce you to The Potty Gardener talking to anyone who will listen, mostly herself.... 

Hello from The Potty Gardener!

There is definitely an air of spring on its way this morning. No sign of a frost, some chirpy birdsong and a glimpse of sunshine. Of course, it won’t last but it is fuelling enthusiasm for my new project.

The kitchen table is strewn with gardening magazines awash with smiley, rosy cheeked experts inviting me to join in their plant-based passions. 'Sow', 'Create', 'Transform', 'Cultivate', 'Titivate', 'Rotavate', 'Motivate'!  Further fuelling of enthusiasm for my new project.

 So what is my new project, I hear you ask (or is that just the voices in my head?)? Well I'm quite happy talking to myself…potty, completely potty….and that is my new project. The potty garden. This year I am going to grow everything in pots, planters and bags. Why (voices in my head again)? Not because I am potty, but because I am living in a rented property where every inch of growing space is a knotted nightmare of ground elder roots. It invades the dry stone walls, penetrates the weed matting and is resistant to roundup. But it is possible to be motivated to sow, create, cultivate, titivate (maybe not rotavate) without the garden.

 I am making a plan that starts with potatoes in planters, but that ultimately helps me to get growing and glowing like they do in the magazines.  I want my pink cheeks to match the flowers in my garden like Carol Klein, to use my hands as spades like Monty Don and develop an organic grin as satisfied as Bob Flowerdew, so watch this space!

Potato Growing Competition - update 4

The weather has not been the best for growing vegetables so far this year and many of the UK’s gardeners are bemoaning a slow start, including some of the amateur gardeners here at Smart Solar taking part in our potato growing competition.

Progress is very varied according to reports from the team. Lindsey who had the luxury of starting hers off in a greenhouse is winning on growth so far, closely followed by Charlotte who has hers in a sheltered spot against a wall.

Lindsey's potatoes are out of the greenhouse now and doing well outside

The rest of the team are starting to talk to their plants in the vain attempt to encourage them to grow faster! Let’s hope some sunshine will do the trick.

Charlotte's plants in early June

Potato growing contest - 2nd update

As we enter the 3rd week of our potato growing contest, this prolonged cold snap is preventing many of us from getting out in the garden and planting our potatoes.

Those of us who planted their seed potatoes a few weeks ago when it looked like Spring had arrived now have their fingers crossed that they've not got frosted - the temperature has certainly been low enough most nights. There's no sign of growth or green shoots!

 

Jo's potatoes chitting in an egg box on the kitchen windowsill

On the other hand, some of us were late taking our planters, compost and seeds home and so haven't had a snow free day to plant ours yet, which means that we have taken the opportunity to chit them. So despite being a few weeks after the others planting them, we might produce a better crop in the long run.....we'll see.


As well as seed potatoes, we also all had a packet of sunflower seeds to see who can grow the tallest sunflower in a Haxnicks Potato Patio Planter (there were 3 in a pack and we only needed 1 for the potatoes!). Hannah planted hers in a Haxnicks Rootrainer propagator and is very pleased to report one small shoot already! 

Hannah planted her sunflower seeds in a Haxnicks Rootrainer

Potato growing contest - 1st update

One by one, we're all planting our seed potatoes in our Haxnicks Potato Planters for the Smart Solar challenge to see who can produce the most potatoes. We all started with identical bags of compost and seed potatoes and a pack of Haxnicks Potato Planters.

First job was to plant them up, some of us with a little help from our pets! MD Jonathan Stobart planted his watched by his two labradors and Sarah's dog was also an interested observer as she was getting her hands dirty planting her seed potatoes.

MD Jonathan has an audience!

Bruno poses with Sarah's Haxnicks Potato Planter

Emma is disappointed that there's no sign of growth yet in her planter, but it's been a bit chilly this week with the recent arctic weather and her seed potatoes have only been in the soil a few days - more patience is required!

Hannah, Charlotte and Jo are lagging behind and still have to take their kits home to plant up - a job for the weekend (after the rugby!).

More news next week!

Get chitting ready for planting your seed potatoes

If you have a small or urban garden potatoes are the perfect veg to grow in a Haxnicks Patio Planter - we even have a special Patio Potato Planter!

Seed potatoes are on sale from December and throughout the spring. Each Patio Planter is suitable for planting 3 seed tubers or 4 tubers if very small 'baby potatoes' are required. By planting each potato planter at 4 week intervals you will be able to harvest over a longer period.

First you need to 'chit' your seed potatoes by placing them in a cool but frost-free place in egg boxes or shallow trays in full light, so that they can form sturdy shoots (chits) about 2.5cm (1 inch) long. This takes approximately 5 weeks.

When they are ready to plant, you will need approximately 40 litres of good general purpose compost for each planter.

Pour approximately 10cm (4 inches) into the bottom of the planter. Plant your seed potatoes, with the shoots or eyes facing upwards, and cover with 5cm (2 inches) of compost. Keep the compost slightly damp, but do not over-water.

When the shoots have grown 7cm (3 inches) high, add another layer of compost to leave the tips of the shoots just showing, keeping the compost damp each time. Repeat this process until the compost and shoots are 3 cm (1 inch) from the top.

When the Potato Planter is full and the leaves of the plants are showing, feed weekly with a high potash/ low nitrogen soluble plant food. If there is danger of frost, cover with fleece and remove when the frost has passed.

When the plant produces small white or pink flowers your potatoes are ready to harvest. Simply dig down into the planter to see if your potatoes are ready, and look out for the planter bulging, another sign of good potato growth. Remove a few potatoes at a time, or tip the planter out to reveal a bumper harvest.

If you want larger tubers then continue feeding and watering for another few weeks. When the potatoes are ready to harvest, you can always store them in a Haxnicks Jute Vegetable Sack!

WIN £100 & Haxnicks goodies

Potato Growing Competition


You could win £100 and a bundle of Haxnicks grow your own goodies.


All you have to do is send us pictures of your Haxnicks’ potato planter full of plants (or home grown potatoes) - it couldn't be easier.


Don't fret if yours don't flower as you'd hoped - there are a couple of other ways to win:

Growing the Hugest Harvest – How many tatties can you grow in one planter? Send us an image of the potatoes laid out on the ground next to or on top of your planter.


Super Spud – photograph your largest potato on a flat surface next to a ruler or tape measure on top of the Haxnicks’ potato planter it was grown in. Extra snaps of how you grew it would definitely help your chances. 


How to enter
You will need:

• A pack of Haxnicks Potato Planters

• Some Seed Potatoes

• 40 litres of compost per planter

• A camera to record your progress

When you come to harvest your potatoes (from June for early crops), email pictures of your produce to: lovetogrow@haxnicks.co.uk.  Alternatively, you can write to us at Haxnicks Ltd, Beaumont Business Centre, Woodlands Road, Mere, Wiltshire BA12 6BT.

You can also use our Facebook or Google+ pages to post comments and photos.

Check out our neat 'how-to' YouTube video to help you get started with planting your very own potatoes.  Click here to see the potato planter (pictured, right) product page or here to find your nearest stockist.

Be sure to take photographs of your progress so you can prove that the potatoes were grown by your own fair hands, but if you get stuck let us know.

Images submitted may be used on www.haxnicks.co.uk, www.facebook.com/haxnicks and in promotional material.  Any personal details we receive from you, however, shall be kept strictly confidential and remain on our files only.

Follow or search the blog for further information, tips and updates.  Good luck!

Growing Potatoes: 'Earthing Up'

In a previous blog we encouraged you to try 'chitting' - how are you getting on?  Here's how the official Haxnicks potato planter is doing - not bad, but we are sure you can do better, especially with this next piece of advice:

Tip: 'Earthing Up'
In terms of your Haxnicks Potato Patio Planter - this is the process of adding more soil around the stems of your potato plant to encourage the plants to produce more tubers.  Simply keep adding compost as the plants grow!

If you would like to win £100 and other Haxnicks goodies simply by growing potatoes - check out our Great Potato Gold Rush Competition.

Learn more about using Potato Patio Planters here

Don't forget to keep watering your Potatoes and let us know how you get on!

Potato Planting Competition & Amateur Gardening Magazine

Robbie Cumming, our PR and Marketing Executive writes:


In Amateur Gardening this week, gardening editor Kris Collins wrote about how to get started with growing potatoes, explaining how to chit and how many potatoes to use in each planter. 

Before I spoke to him about the article, I had already decided to choose a certain variety known as 'Sharpe's Express', which I bought from my local garden centre (see pic below).

Seed potatoes at Orchard Park in Gillingham, Dorset.

The potatoes were described as being great for all manner of cooking methods and being disease resistant sounded perfect for me.  These factors are obviously rather important as I'm the one who is running the Potato Planter Competition!  The pressure is on, especially as the last time I grew potatoes in containers was when I was 10 years old - almost 2 decades ago now!  Luckily for me, the beauty of growing potatoes in planters such as ours is that it is a much safer bet than sowing in rows - especially as you can move your crop into the greenhouse, or porch, if frost is on its way.

Tip: Chitting


Allowing your potatoes to 'chit' (I said 'chit'!) allows shoots to sprout from the 'eyes' of the potato and can speed things up, essential if you want to start growing early like I am.  However, you can still plant potatoes straight into the bags without chitting.


I placed my seed potatoes in egg boxes (see picture) and placed them on a shelf in the atrium between our office and warehouse - it's light, cool, but protected from frost.  A few weeks have gone by, and the shoots are slowly emerging, but being the inquisitive yet impatient young chappie as I am, I emailed Kris to see if he could tell me anything about the potato variety I was about to plant out.


"I grew Sharpe’s Express in one of your patio planters last year and got 2.5kg of potatoes – ended up being my best yield over all other varieties tried last year. Hope you have the same luck."

Yes, I do have quite a smug look on my face, but my mother told me never to count my chickens before they've hatched (and she should know with all her bantam hens!).  

Having said that, I would like to throw down the gauntlet and challenge you all to a potato duel!  Click here for more information on how to join in the Great Potato Gold Rush! 

Amateur Gardening is available from newsagents, supermarkets and garden centres nationwide every Saturday priced £1.99

Potato progress - Winter crops

Hopefully, you are all enjoying your own home-grown potatoes by now, and doesn't the taste make it all worthwhile? But it ain't over til the fat lady sings (at christmas) - Once you've emptied your Potato Patio Planters, keep them in mind, as you can very easily have another batch of fresh home-grown spuds ready for the Christmas table!

All you have to do is replant from mid-August to early September. Seed potatoes will be available from most garden centres and mail-order companies - Alternatively, you could just keep back a few spuds from your summer crop and use them as your seed potatoes! Add a little straw/old leaves to the bottom of your planter - as this rots it will help to provide some warmth, protecting your winter potatoes from the cold. Then plant as normal.

Potato foliage cannot handle the frost, so ideally bring your planters inside as the cold comes on - a greenhouse, barn, or the kitchen will do, as long as there is some light. As normal, don't soak your potatoes, but ensure the soil remains moist. (Sorry to all those of you who dislike the word 'moist', but it does the job!)

It will also help to cover your plants with fleece to warm them - there are various fleece jackets available, which pop over the plant very easily - why not choose a decorated one for a bit more colour against the drabness of winter?

Hope you're enjoying your harvests, long may they last!

Love to grow!

Growing Sweet Potatoes

The Sweet potato is a versatile and increasingly popular vegetable and is certainly able to grow outdoors in the milder areas of the UK. In other areas it does well in the greenhouse, glasshouse or polytunnel. It is a scrambling, tender perennial closely related to Morning Glories and it grown as an annual and harvested in the early autumn.

1. Take a few clean sweet potatoes and place into a container
2. Cover them with peat and keep damp
3. Leave in a warm place
4. When ‘slips’ emerge from the surface to a height of 20cm, trim them off
5. Pot into Compact Rootrainers and allow to grow on.

When all frost danger is finished place them into their growing place. In late September, carefully dig them up. Leave for one week to mature in a warm place (allows skins to set and flavour to sweeten)

Alternatively, order cuttings or slips, which will be delivered from late April onwards and pot the cuttings immediately into the Compact Rootrainer trays.

Chelsea Flower Show Review

Emma models the Bag-to-Boot, whilst Emily tries to hide in the Pea and Bean Planter!

We would really like to thank everyone who came to our stand at the Chelsea Flower Show 2009. It was, for Haxnicks, an incredible experience and we thoroughly enjoyed it, and were pretty much flat out from 7am to 8pm every day!

Because Chelsea is such a great experience we decided early on to get as many of our staff to 'have a go' at running the stand for a couple of days at a time. This provided a great day out and lots of lessons for us at Haxnicks about what customers really think of our products - all positive I might add...

The Haxnicks Planters proved their popularity, selling continuously throughout the show, with a lot of people taking the chance to get some last minute potato planters going- it is still not to late to enjoy home grown organic vegetables.

However ultimately we would like to thank Chelsea for allowing us, during our occasional breaks, to tour (whizz) around the amazing gardens.

Victoria takes a break from her Rootrainer demonstrations, and convinces herself that our Pots Naturally palm tree is actually a real palm, somewhere on a beautiful beach...	...whilst Simon gets into his sales pitch, Julia demonstrates some other uses for the Haxnicks Baby Victorian Bell, and Emily surveys the scene.

Potato Patio Planter Planting Instructions

Seed Potatoes are on sale from December and throughout the Spring, and again in July/August for planting for Autumn and Christmas. Each Patio Planter is suitable for planting 3 seed tubers, or 4 tubers if very small 'baby potatoes' are required. By planting each potato planter at 4 week intervals you will be able to harvest over a longer period.

Place your seed potatoes in a cool but frost-free place in egg boxes or shallow trays in full light, so that they can form sturdy shoots (chits) about 2.5cm (1 inch) long. This takes approximately 5 weeks.

For each planter you will need approximately 40 litres of good general purpose compost.

Pour approximately 10cm (4 inches) into the bottom of the planter. Plant your seed potatoes, with the shoots or eyes facing upwards, and cover with 5cm (2 inches) of compost. Keep the compost slightly damp, but do not over-water.

When the shoots have grown 7cm (3 inches) high, add another layer of compost to leave the tips of the shoots just showing, keeping the compost damp each time. Repeat this process until the compost and shoots are 3 cm (1 inch) from the top.

When the Potato Planter is full and the leaves of the plants are showing, feed weekly with a high potash/ low nitrogen soluble plant food. If there is danger of frost, cover with fleece and remove when the frost has passed.

When the plant produces small white or pink flowers your potatoes are ready to harvest. Simply dig down into the planter to see if your potatoes are ready, and look out for the planter bulging, another sign of good potato growth. Remove a few potatoes at a time, or tip the planter out to reveal a bumper harvest.

If you want larger tubers then continue feeding and watering for another few weeks.

You Will Need

• 40 litres high quality multi-purpose compost/planter. (120 litres for the 3 planters)
• 3 or 4 seed potatoes / planter (9 - 12 seeds for the 3 planters)
• Liquid feed

Now you can enjoy the taste of Home-grown Spuds!

Haxnicks goes to Chelsea

For the first time Haxnicks will be appearing at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2009.We will be selling Rootrainers, Patio Planters, Canetoppers and Soft-tie off the stand, and offering mail order delivery on the rest of the Haxnicks product range. Also there is a special show discount of 15% on all payments taken at the stall.

Come and find us at Stall EA110 to buy, order, or just to have a chat!

New Fruit and Veg Planters in time for Christmas

Following the success of the Potato Patio Planters, Haxnicks is launching four more similar products in time for the Christmas market. Orders are being taken now for delivery from September.

A pack of Vegetable Patio Planters contains three planters of varying sizes – deep, medium and shallow – to accommodate different types of vegetable and salad plants. They are accompanied by a detailed growing guide that includes which varieties suit each container and how many to plant in each. Available in either a plain jute design or a fun photo-pictorial design, they will capture the growing consumer interest in both children’s gardening and healthy-eating.

The Kitchen Herb Patio Planters and the Strawberry Patio Planters contain two planters per pack.
The planters have an open top with eight pockets around the side. They have slightly different
dimensions but are both available in dark green with a decorative rim. Both come with detailed growing guides and useful tips for a successful crop.

Now, with Haxnicks Patio Planters, anybody can easily grow organic fruit and veg. They are ideal for use in small gardens, or on patios and balconies. They will appeal to the increasing numbers of consumers who want to ‘grow their own’ and try organic alternatives to the usual supermarket produce. Made from a tough, woven polyethylene (the same material as the Potato Patio Planters), the Patio Planters come with reinforced drainage holes and handles on each side so they can be easily moved around.

All five products in the Haxnicks Patio Planter range have a suggested retail price of £14.99.

Home Grown Potatoes for Everyone

Haxnicks has launched an innovative new product which will enable anyone to grow potatoes, even if they do not have a garden.

The new Haxnicks Potato Patio Planter is a planting bag made from tough, green woven polyethylene. It comes complete with drainage holes and with handles on both sides so it can be easily moved. The planters stand 45cm high and hold approximately 40 litres of compost. They have been designed for use on patios and balconies, or in small gardens where there is no space for growing vegetables.

The re-usable planters come in packs of three. On the reverse of the pack, there are detailed instructions on how to grow and harvest your potatoes.

“More and more people are coming to appreciate the huge difference in the taste of home-grown vegetables,” comments Malcolm Andrews, Haxnicks Sales Director. “The Potato Patio Planter now makes it easy for anyone to grow delicious home-grown spuds. The good news is that no digging is required!”

Haxnicks Potato Patio Planters, priced at £14.99 for a pack of three.