How to Grow Purple Potatoes
I love growing early Purple potatoes…purely because it’s more unusual.
They are very versatile when cooking, I boil them, roast or mash.
Growing purple potatoes is exactly the same as growing white potatoes.
Before you plant potatoes you need to chit or sprout them. This means laying the potato tubers in a box in an unheated room, after a few weeks the potato tubers will start to produce an eye and then a sprout will start to form. When the shoots are around 1 to 2inches the potatoes are ready to be planted.
I planted my potatoes in potato growing bags and filled these with compost and topsoil mixed together – I then planted 3 to 4 seed potatoes per bag. You can plant Early potatoes in late March (though you can plant them two weeks earlier in southern areas – and a couple of weeks later in northern areas).
When the potato plant is about 10 inches tall, you can add more soil around the plant as this will encourages more potatoes to grow. If frost is forecast you may need to give the potatoes some frost protection. You can do this using fleece or cover the plants in straw.
Make sure you keep the plants well watered especially when the plant is flowering as this is when the tubers fatten up.
If you planted early potatoes then they should be ready around June, and now you can dig them up. If you planted them in a potato sack then you can either open the flap to dig the potatoes out, or alternatively I pull the plant out gently and dig the potatoes out – I even tip the whole bag of soil out in a large tray and pull up all the potatoes.
