Time to plant spuds
Easter is a popular time for planting potatoes, but what is the logic behind this seasonal spud surge? Bob explains
EVERYONE knows to plant potatoes at Easter, yet this date is different every year. Oddly, the date of Easter varies by many weeks because it follows the moon. Easter was ecclesiastically determined as the first Sunday following the first full moon following the Spring equinox (when daylight = dark night hours). So bizarrely, this is astrological (well, lunar) gardening. But does it work?
Well, I guess if the results were obviously poor we’d have given up by now, so it seems to work well enough.
And there’s some sense in it, as waiting until after the equinox means the new shoots have a 12-hour (or longer) day to grow in, and this suits potatoes which originated nearer the tropics. Plus, more daylight than night hours means the worst of the cold is over and the soil is getting warmer. Another lore, at first counter-intuitive, is to ‘plant your lates early and your earlies late’. This is perfectly sensible, as lates (or maincrops) are high-yielding varieties that need a long season to make maximum yields. If planted late, these may not have produced much by the time frosts return. On the other hand, earlies are relatively quick to crop, albeit with a smaller yield. So if these are not got in early, it doesn’t matter so much – though obviously, the sooner they’re planted, the sooner they’re ready.
In fact, you can plant earlies rather late and still get a late crop of new potatoes. With milder autumns (and a blight-free year), you can plant batches of earlies from Easter until August Bank Holiday, so harvesting new potatoes near continually, with the last still fresh for Christmas. Actually, thinking about it, it’s most likely that we’ve traditionally planted potatoes at Easter simply because it was the first bank holiday weekend of the year!
“The worst of the cold is over”