Gardening & Landscaping Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for gardeners and landscapers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I planted potatoes in a bag and in a week I started seeing beautiful green leaves, I started adding more soil every time the plant grew and after a while I filled the whole bag.
after 10 weeks the leaves were still growing, I decided to dig up to see what I have, to my surprise I found a long stem but only a couple of small potatoes in the bottom of the bag.
what have I done wrong?
Another rule of thumb is that for the maximum weight of crop, harvest the potatoes when the leaves start to die.
We don't know where in the world you are, but some maincrop varieties will continue growing until the leaves are killed by the first frosts. A few overnight air frosts that kill the leaves will not damage the potatoes underground, so you don't need to harvest them before the first frost.
The time to harvest can vary from 70 to 120 days, depending on the variety.
If you harvested them about now, 10 weeks before that would be the middle of August which is very late to plant potatoes. For the best crop they should be planted as soon as frosty nights end in spring, i.e. in April or May.
Here is "my" rule of thumb about when to harvest (reasonable size) patatoes: at least 100 days after you planted them.
10 weeks is only 70 days, so give it another month at least ...
