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Hey everyone, it's now August which means it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
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everywhere you go. Sorry, I'll stop the singing, you might tune off
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But yes, it's August which means it's time to start planting the Christmas potatoes
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and one main tip is do not plant them outside in the ground Christmas potatoes
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Yes, they'll start growing. Yes, they'll start to produce potatoes. But as soon as you get to end of October, November, when the cold weather comes, the frost will kill the plants off and they won't produce your potatoes. They'll just wither and die. So what you need to do is you need to plant them in tubs or boxes. Now, I grew all my summer ones in these ones, these old recycling boxes, which have got holes in the bottom. And we have
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had a fantastic crop if you saw my posts on Instagram and stuff like that you'll have seen how
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well the crops did so we're going to start planting some Christmas potatoes in these you can start
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them off outside in the boxes and then move them into a polytonal or a greenhouse over winter where
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they will be protected from the frost and you will get some great potatoes from them so let see what potatoes we are going to be growing for Christmas Now obviously you can get seed potatoes from garden centres
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and you can also purchase them online at Amazon and stuff like that
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Or you can grow them from supermarket ones. Now, a lot of people say don't grow them from supermarket ones
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because they're being treated and you'll have issues with diseases and stuff like that
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But my dad grows his from supermarket ones and he does fantastic on his allotment
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So I have no issue with growing them from supermarket ones. So I went across to Tesco and purchased some potatoes
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And we have got some Maris Piper ones. These ones. We've got some baking potatoes to try
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We've also got some all rounder potatoes. And we've also got some jacket potatoes
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So four different varieties that we are trying. And because we kept them, we purchased them a week ago
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and we kept them in the house, they have all started sprouting
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So there no need to chit them and get them growing They all got sprouts growing on them So we going to put some compost in the bottom of our tubs and place the potatoes but we show you all that in this video So let have a look and get the potatoes in
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Right, so we've got all the potatoes in place. So let's show you what they look like
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So we've put them with the chutes facing upwards. As you can see, they're all sprouting
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They're all doing well. That one's a bit mouldy, but we'll give them. it ago if not it'll just rot away but yeah we'll place them all with the sprouts up you might think
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oh he's got a few too many in there but when i emptied them in summer when i planted my early varieties
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there was plenty of room for more potatoes it didn't fill all the boxes up so hopefully we get a good
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abundance of christmas potatoes coming in these so we're going to make sure we'll label them up
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so that we remember which varieties are in which box and hopefully we get some delicious potatoes at christmas so we've now got to cover these
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up with compost we don't leave them like that we need to cover them all up with compost so we've now
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got these all covered over with compost we will need to fill these up as we'll water them
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as the compost will compact and it will sink because a lot of the compost is usually air so once it been watered we need to fill them all up to the top we compost so that it maximizes the amount of potatoes that we actually get from these boxes
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we could in fear take these outside to grow outside but they're in the polytunnel and the polytunnel is absolutely boiling
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so keeping them in here will help growth and help development and get them growing good plants on them
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so we're going to keep them in the polytunnel because if we took them out of side and they'll get heavy and they'll be hard to move
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So we're going to keep them in the polytunnel. Keep them watered and get them growing to a fantastic crop
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So let's get them watered. So we've now got all these watered and we've got them all labeled up so we know what's in them
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And yeah, we just need to fill them up with some more compost as it's gone down a bit since we watered them
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Fill them up to the top to maximize the amount of crops that we get from our Christmas potatoes
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So that is how we start our Christmas potatoes off. Let me know in the comments if you're going to be starting some Christmas potatoes off this year
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And make sure you like and subscribe and then you'll be able to stay up to date with our weekly tour
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showing you how well they're getting on throughout the year. And you can follow along and see if we manage to get some Christmas potatoes from our crop
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Until next time, remember, keep smiling, keep shining and keep gardening with bed everyone
