How I planted my new potatoes this year (and why I used a bulb planter)

I dug the whole bed over with my big fork before anything went in. Potatoes need loose, well-worked soil — they need space to swell underground. I worked from one end, pushing the fork to its full depth, levering it forward, breaking up the clods as I went. This is also when I pulled out the bindweed roots. There were a lot of bindweed roots. There always are.

The bulb planter is what made this year different. You push it into the soil and pull it back out and it leaves a neat, consistent hole. I marked out a grid across the whole bed first — all the holes at once, evenly spaced — then went back along each row, popped a potato in each one, and covered over with compost. Much faster than a trowel. Everything ended up properly spaced rather than slightly guessed.

The first shoots came through a couple of weeks later — tiny little things, easy to miss if you were not looking for them.

Once they were through, I covered them over with more compost — earthing up. It keeps the developing tubers out of the light (light turns them green and inedible) and gives the plant more stem underground to produce from. I have done this once. The plants have pushed back through and are now big and leafy and taking up proper space.

First earlies are ready roughly ten weeks after planting. The signal is flowers — once they start flowering, you can test by carefully digging down beside one plant and feeling for tubers. Egg-sized and they are ready.

New potatoes want to be small and waxy, boiled whole and eaten the same day. Still warm from the earth. I cannot wait for potato salad time.