Potatoes 3

We've had some fantastic weather recently - beautiful sunny days which has really got the green fingers itching to get out and plant things. It's amazing seeing what impact the ten days or so of sunshine have done to the plants. They've been lapping it up and growing very very quickly.

The potatoes in particular have been growing faster than we can earth them up (this is where you pull the earth up the shoots - this helps prevent blight and the potatoes from going green. Green = poison). However they've grown so fast that they're now far too tall to earth up without creating mountains in the veg patch. Mr has mulched them with grass clippings to keep out the light to help. I've been checking online to make sure that it isn't the hot weather making them grow overly tall (i.e. are they bolting - where plants expend loads of energy growing shoots which distracts from them producing the goods?). We've given them a water plus rain is forecast for the next few days so hopefully that will calm them down. Anyway, check out these pictures showing the heights that the potatoes have grown in the space of a couple of weeks...

The first two were taken on 3rd May and the last four were taken on 8th, 10th, 11th and 15th of May respectively.

It's amazing how tall they've got. In the last picture the tallest I measured was 20 inches... They are supposed to be earthed up at 9 inches (which they were) but they've just shot up again. Soon they'll be taller than me!