The holes may be caused by slugs. Little to be done I'm afraid. But planting them deeper & mounding up the soil around the stems should help. Most soil creatures don't like being continually disturbed. You would also be exposing them to the birds which will quickly gobble them up!

When did you plants them DJ? It is a little early yet for planting potatoes end of March is considered a good time to start. Or was this potatoes you planted last year? By the way - welcome to GoY!

Thank you to both for replies. planted them about october. started to come up but snow and frost seems to have killed them off.when I dug them up to see what was going on with them I found they were full of holes.

Ah that explains it, you don't plant potatoes in October, unless it is a small quantity in a greenhouse for new potatoes at Christmas. The tubers can't overwinter in the ground. As I said above end of March is time to think of planting - weather permitting!

That is normally true but - spite of such a terribly long & cold winter it is still possible to find potatoes that have survived the winter in the ground! I found that out on Wednesday when I went to the allotment with my friend for the very first time. Last year he had to undergo a very serious operation so for a lot of the summer & autumn he hardly got down to his allotment. Consequently a few rows of potatoes weren't harvested. So I was quite surprised to find that quite a few potatoes had survived! A lot were rotten but there were some good ones as well. :-)

Some runner beans also stayed on the plants (I've planted half a dozen in a big pot on the balcony today, to grow them more for their lovely bright red flowers more than for the beans!). There were no end of Jerusalem Artichokes & he gave me a couple of kilos. I didn't know what to do with them but the next day I fried a tuber or two, cut up as chips. They were rather sweet tasting but not too bad.