First early potatoes should be ready to lift in June and July, second earlies in July and August, maincrops from late August through to October. My trick is to scrabble around the roots, pulling soil away until I can see if there are any tubers in there which are big enough to eat. Tubers are formed during the budding of potatoes. If there are just one or two, then I go along the whole row until I have enough for a meal. This is prime time for harvesting tender new potatoes.. Just dig before the ground completely freezes. Wait for them to flower. The longer you leave them alone after the flowers die, the bigger the potatoes get. If you want to harvest all of your new potatoes at the same time, try to time your harvest when most of the potato plants have started to flower. To toughen up your potatoes for storage before harvest, do not water them much after they flower. You can rob your new potatoes anytime after they have reached usable size, 50-60 days after planting for early varieties. Insect Pests: To protect growing plants from foliage-munching Colorado potato beetles and flea beetles, cover the … Harvesting new potatoes before the main harvest is often referred to as “robbing”. When you see that the first flower has bloomed in the potato plant, be ready to harvest the sweet new potatoes.Instead of digging out the entire plant, carefully move aside the soil around the roots. The short answer is no, you cannot dig potatoes before they have flowered. The potatoes will begin to plump up at this point, growing until the plant starts to die back. Yes, you can actually grow potatoes from last year's crop. Potatoes need to stay in the ground until flowering has finished (or longer) in order to be large enough to use. Know you know when the right time to harvest them is, let's take a look at how to do so properly. First, early harvests, called “new potatoes,” can be made anytime after the plants begin to produce flowers. They’ll crop earlier and be bred for flavor and texture as an early. If you leave them until fall and the leaves die, you will have the largest potatoes. With earlies, wait until the flowers open or the buds drop; the tubers are ready to harvest when they are the size of hens’ eggs. Here are some you might face. Let the vines die all the way back before you harvest them. If you left some tubers in the ground over the winter after last year's harvest, however, don't use these as seed potatoes. It's not usually worth digging potatoes until they flower, but they will continue to bulk up after that time. Though you can harvest many main-crop potatoes as earlies, or carefully dig a few out after the plant has flowered, I think it’s best to grow types specifically bred to be earlies. After the purplish flowers die, you can start digging for baby potatoes. The period when you can dig up young tubers depends on the region, variety and technology of planting potatoes. Clean your potatoes before … When your potatoes get close to flowering is the come get me, I’m ready for the table signal. Potatoes can be a trouble-free crop if you follow a few simple practices, though they’re not immune to typical garden problems. Can you dig up potatoes before they flower? When the potato plant flowers, it has generally reached maturity.. New Potatoes.