Harvesting Potatoes from My Small 15m² Kitchen Garden 🥔 - Charlotte & King Edward Harvest.

Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel. I'm Aga and today I'm going to be finally lifting my potatoes out of this patch here behind me. So this is something very long overdue, I know I should have done it at least a month ago probably, but all of a sudden the last couple of weeks got so busy that I didn't end up doing it. So today I am going to be lifting them finally. I did chop down some of the foliage back because it was enormous, it was yay high. I think a lot of the energy went into the foliage so hopefully there's also some potatoes in there. I am quite excited about finding out about the amount of the potatoes and how big they would be because this is the very first time that I was able to grow this many potatoes. I have planted I believe around 20 seed potatoes, two varieties Charlotte and King Edwards. The front row is Charlotte and at the back is King Edwards. Previously I have only been able to grow potatoes in pots and as you can imagine this is always, the yield from that is always smaller than if you can grow potatoes in like more bigger space so that the spots can develop better. So I am excited but you know I'm being realistic. There wasn't much rain over the summer which the summer was great here in UK, I loved it, but for plants it was quite tough. I have been watering it but still it's not the same as when the plants get rain water. Let's just do it, let's just take them out and see what's under the ground, under the soil. So I have a couple of boxes here. I think this should be enough, if not then I'll arrange something else. So I'll start with just chopping the stems. Some of them are still due to release flowers but look how long they are, it's a bit ridiculous. What is this? Okay so this is one of the King Edwards that is growing at the back and it's this long. So I don't know what that means. When I was growing potatoes in pots they never grew this long stems so I don't know what does that imply. I do hope there will be some potatoes in there and that the plants didn't only use the energy to grow extremely long stems because that would be very disappointing. But yeah, we'll find out I suppose. I know I am a little bit overdressed for doing things like that but we've had quite a busy day today with my husband and we had very important meetings and stuff and my head is buzzing a little bit too much and I felt like I need to put my hands into the soil just to release some tension and calm down a little bit. So I didn't bother with changing too much. I just changed my shoes basically and came out here. Okay this is interesting and it's extremely long. Tell me in the comments if you have the same thing when you're stressed and you feel the need to get into the garden and like chop things down. To me this is such a stress relief. I suppose it's like exercises for some other people, some normal people. I don't know. I can see some spuds already in here. I can also see a huge slug. Disgusting. Oh, how dare you. Gross. I started pulling out the stems not realizing that I have my camera was off basically. So I've pulled out the stems out of this section here which came out without any potatoes which is scary. Please let it be potatoes in here. Why is there no potatoes? Oh, we have one. We have one in my bucket. I started stressing that there will be no potatoes. Why? I should let this go because I am piercing them. Wow! This is a nice size. I don't think I've ever managed to grow this size of shallots before. They would be tiny. They would be like a half the size of this when growing in pots. Maybe I was doing it wrong. Yeah, they would be mostly like this. Oh, there's more. There's loads. They're deep. Hello worms. Tiny, tiny. Do you know what these remind me of? Have you seen my raspberry series? What a nightmare. There's more. Oh, lovely. Okay, I'm going to put the camera back. So I just found a potato that was kind of nibbled like this but it was inside of the ground. It was not sitting anywhere on top. Weird but okay. And then as I was digging in here, there is a hole. There is a hole in the ground. I can see a potato here but there is definitely a hole. There is a tunnel in that patch. This one is okay. It doesn't seem to be nibbled. And then I looked at the back and there is a whole bunch of ground. So I think there must have been some kind of a creature. There must have been some kind of a creature. I don't want to say what it is but you can guess that has probably... I hope it doesn't live in my veg patch. Oh no, that's gross. And it has dug up a tunnel underneath the potatoes and was definitely feeding on them. Oh my god, why? Is this veg patch cursed? First the raspberries and now this? Okay, let's carry on and see what happens. Yeah, there's definitely a hole in there. So these are the King Edwards. They are quite small, right? They are tiny. Tiny, tiny. They're not supposed to be this tiny, right? Normally they would grow bigger, I suppose. Would that be due to the lack of rain this year? I thought that the King Edwards would be... that they are generally bigger than shallots. But I guess since there are so many tiny spuds, does it mean that they haven't developed yet fully? Should they sit in the ground longer? But the thing is, the thing is that I don't want to keep the potatoes in this patch for longer because it has become such an eyesore already with the way it looked. And now that I know that, something has been digging up trenches in here and potentially feeding off my potatoes. Or probably stealing other crops as well. I couldn't see the exit hole on the other side, so I don't know how, how is this coming in? Because there wasn't any hole on the top of it. Anyway, that's very rude of them. Anyway, it was supposed to rain this whole week. The weather forecast at the end of last week was showing that it was supposed to rain from Monday onwards, this current week. Today is Thursday. It's evening, as you can guess, because it's quite dark. Although today was also cloudy, semi-cloudy. Right now it's completely overcast, but it's still quite warm. And there was no rain. There was like one day of rain, not full day, few hours. It was a good type of rain. It was solid, but it was way too short still for the level of dryness of the ground everywhere. So it didn't really do much, which is a ridiculous thing to say in this country. Like we never had to complain about not enough rain, if you know what I mean. The one thing that we have loads and too much is the rain. But this year it has become to the point of desperation really for gardens and growers. This is probably the weirdest position that someone could harvest their potatoes in. I have to say that I am already feeling much better. Was this the seed potato? I think that was the seed potato. I am feeling much better already, like mentally. My husband took our daughter for a walk and because this is how he kind of releases the tension when something is going on during the day and I just go into the garden and I either chop things down or dig the ground. That's my best remedy. And do let me know if you maybe want to see a full... Do let me know if you want to see a full August, end of August really, because this is the last week of August now, garden tour. I have been just chopping things down every now and then because plants, especially dahlias, they are not able to hold their own weight and they just collapse. They grow tall, extremely tall. The Labelle Epoque has grown so massive that it was covering the garage window and it was basically casting shade and covering the space of all of the other plants, other dahlias and the roses in that border. It was so wide, like a big scarecrow hanging over them. And one morning I was like you got to go, because you're annoying now, because the stems were so thick as well. I'll show you maybe in the next video when I do the full garden tour, because I still have kind of yay height of the stems left in the ground, because they serve me as support for other dahlias to tie them around. But yeah, they were so thick and then when they divide into three from the main stem, those side stems were so heavy, because they were also so big and the flower heads of those plants, of those flowers, were massive as well and they were just falling. So not only it was then pulling the whole plant to the side, but also squashing and ripping off and pulling on the other dahlias and destroying them. So yeah, one day I was like, nope, you're out. So this one is gone. I will definitely keep the tubers, but maybe I should lift that dahlia and reduce the tubers from that border. I don't know, never had that issue before. Yeah, shallots are nice. Shallots are lovely. Let me know which potatoes have you grown this season and how they did. Shallots I assume are like the standard for every gardener, at least in the UK. I think a lot of gardeners just grow shallots. Let me know what would you recommend, because King Edwards I think are my first timers this year and that's my opinion of them. So maybe next year I will choose a different variety alongside shallots, because I will definitely grow shallots again. Yeah, but do let me know which ones you have grown and you are happy with the result. Look at that! How can you not love shallots? There's some sort of disease on this one. What are those spots? And is this still safe to eat? This is on the shallots. It was not on all of them. This one, they all seem to have it from that plant, from that one specific plant. Is it okay to still eat them? What is this? This one also has it. This one as well, but much less. Yeah, what is this? I figured when I'm just scooping my little fork like this, I'm not puncturing puncturing, I'm not puncturing the potatoes or it's less likely that I do that. So it looks like this is it, shallots and King Edwards. So when it comes to the size, shallots are definitely the winner. King Edwards, there's few bigger, like a normal expected size, but even that one, I thought that King Edwards will be the bigger variety, comparing to shallots at least. But majority of them are tiny or super tiny. Yeah, there's only a few that are of a decent size. And yes, do let me know, because I can see that both varieties have that disease on them, which was on some of the plants only. Not all of them have it. It was kind of closer to the edge of the border. These ones from here seemed to be okay and healthy. But yeah, if you know what that is, those kind of spots all over and what it looks like, the skin is either peeling or as if it was blister or something like that. Yeah, do let me know what that is, because I haven't seen that before. And yeah, if it's safe to consume as well, hopefully it is. So yes, this is my potato harvest of 2026, shallots and King Edwards. This is the biggest harvest of potatoes that I've managed to get since I've been growing. But again, I am saying that this is the first time that I have grown my potatoes in the border, where they had more space to grow, compared to the pots that I have done it in, in the past three years. So it is expected, it was expected, but I didn't know, I wasn't sure about the outcome. But yeah, I'm very happy specifically with the shallots. So I think this is a success, minus the rodent in the border, but ---- happens, right? So I hope you enjoyed this episode and do let me know which varieties you have grown this season and how did you get on with the harvest. Like it, hype it, leave me a comment, subscribe to my channel if you haven't yet, that would be all very much appreciated. And I will see you in the next video. And I think the next video, a couple of videos that I am kind of due to record that is on my mind is the garden tour at the end of the month of August and the end of, and the end of summer harvest from my small garden, because there is a lot that I need to pick, especially tomatoes. There is going to be a lot of passata sauce for the winter months, which I'm happy. I have gigantic zucchini slash marrows to pick, so I'm going to make a soup or something like that, or maybe a leczer, which is a Polish dish. And yes, the parsnips behind me are doing well as well. And there is so many beans, so many beans, so... And there is a slug on the border as well right now. How rude. So yes, okay, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!