Compost bin full of potato plants :(
Mel Mcbride
Posts: 112
I just checked my two bins for the first time this year, and they are FULL of potato plants.. I will NEVER put potato peelings in there again!
Anyway.. what's the best thing to do?
I am wondering if lifting the bins, sifting out the 20 something plants per bin, then restacking the bins (they could do with a good thorough turn anyway) is the best idea - albeit the longest way around or something else?
I can't be the first person this has happened to!!
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Wait until the potatoes are ready to harvest and then eat them. There will be nothing wrong with them. We frequently dine on 'volunteers' like this.
Yeah Berghill - I can imagine they'll be very tasty! But I'm worried that each one of those spuds that grows becomes another plant next year.. and so on..
I dunno.. one bin I could probably easy get them out, I might just leave the other one, see what happens. Probably all my own fault as I haven't turned the contents for months now
Yup! It's happened to me in the past. Got a few good meals of Charlotte potatoes, but then my daleks never seemed to heat up.
Maybe I will just leave them then.
If you don't want the potatoes then I'd just keep covering them - it'll get too hot and if you smother the growth they'll eventually die - bit of old carpet will exclude light. I've had several advocado seeds successfully sprout - its just nature trying to survive.
Only if you don't remove them and cook them - and by then it'll all be compost and you'll have emptied the bin and spread it all on your veg patch or wherever, and you'll have started another bin full
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
ergh...you could eat them then? ...thought spuds had to be bought tubers...
but you dont plant spuds from the supermarket do you...I read this somewhere.
Very confused...I reckon my OH would be mortified if I served up spuds from the compost bin...lol...
Have got some tubers to go in soon,,,first time for me...
What's the difference? Presumably you'll be growing yours in a veg patch you've applied liberal amounts of compost to ...
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'd just chop off the green growth with a shovel and keep throwing new material on top. Or turn and refill if you're feeling energetic. My compost never heats up fully, and I'm always ending up with volunteer potatoes, avocados.. and even a mango seedling once. Just pull them up/off and leave them on the top to die.
When I was a kid we just cut supermarket potatoes into quarters and planted them up for our potato crop. Even a few years ago one of the upperclass supermarkets was selling small purple potatoes for eating.. I just saved a few in the back of the fridge all winter and planted them out in the spring. I understand the philosophy behind using seed potatoes.. but when you only want a few plants a huge expensive bag of seed potatoes from the gardening center isn't my solution.
No idea what the difference is...sure Monty said to buy seed potatoes from supplier not to plant ones bought for eating...dunno...from posts it seems difference is the quantity of yeld???...
Yeah gonna put mine in veg plot with manure and new soil, tho' they came with a bag for growing.
Also...I have sown Cauliflower seed and have individual "cress" in just a few days...is this what to expect?...lol....I'm clueless!