Tino’s tips for potatoes

Spuds are a much-loved crop in Tassie, and TINO CARNEVALE has a few valuable tips to share

Ihold a deep, abiding love for the plant blandly named Solanum tuberosum. I have a theory that humans only learnt to harness fire in order to cook them, that cutting implements were developed as we strived to make chips, and the shovel was invented for turning soil to plant spuds.

As a local boy from the south island of Australia I am constantly apologising to my north-islander friends as they get dragged into conversations about the best potato varieties. A lot of folk are only familiar with two types – washed and brushed – but here in Tassie, we take our taters very seriously. In fact, many people I grew up with were nicknamed Spud. This is not derogatory; it’s a title of esteem.

Any vegetable that tastes great fried, baked, boiled and roasted, or that can be mashed, chipped and stuffed, earns a place of high honour in my garden. It can be used to make alcohol, fuel and even electricity. Together with paints and some butcher’s paper, it can also function as an emergency kids’ craft activity on a rainy day.

Potatoes are so easy to grow that even a piece of peel will shoot in the compost, as long as it has an eye. In fact, they can sometimes feel a bit weedy in your garden because it can be tricky to find all the tubers when harvesting.

The superior taste is the main reason I grow my own spuds; there’s nothing as good as freshly dug Pink Eyes. There are many superb varieties of potatoes that are not easily available to buy, so growing your own is the best way to enjoy them. They are also very high in carbohydrates, making them a great source of energy.

Simply throwing a potato at the ground and covering it with a bit of straw usually results in an edible crop but, with a bit of extra work, the quality and quantity of your crop can be greatly improved. My favoured growing technique was handed down from my grandfather. First, seed potatoes should be chitted, which involves laying them out on a bench in indirect sunlight and leaving them to form shoots. Select the strongest of the shoots and knock the rest off – this means the plant will form a single growth point out of the ground. All the potatoes you harvest will grow up the main growth point above the seed potato that you planted, so planting as deep as your soil type allows or building up with straw and compost will give you a bigger harvest.

Potatoes grow quite happily in a range of soil types, although loams are best. Heavy soils impact crop size as it is harder for the roots to break through. With heavy soils, you need to add organic matter, which will

work its way between the soil particles and help make it light and airy. Incorporating organic matter in a sandy soil will help it to retain moisture and nutrients.

Potatoes are a hungry crop and need plenty of food. In addition to compost, I like to dose the soil with well-rotted animal manure prior to planting, and then throw a good amount of blood and bone on the surface afterwards. They also need water if you want good-sized potatoes, especially through any long dry periods.

With many varieties of potato to choose from, there is one for every occasion. In the kitchen, they are split into two main groups: waxy and floury (or fluffy). Waxy are low in starch and hold together when cooked; floury are high in starch and fall apart when cooked. Of the waxies, Tassie’s own Pink Eye is a good, stable producer, and I have also trialled some of the fingerling varieties, such as Kipfler and the superb yellow Russian Banana, with great success. Another waxy, Purple Congo will not produce a large crop, although there is something special about the look on your mates’ faces when you serve them up purple mash. Productive King Edward is my choice of the fluffy types, and the reliable Australian-bred Coliban is another standout spud I’ve trialled. Really, there are no bad potato varieties in my world. As long as they can be used in the creation of such earthly delights as gnocchi, I’m happy.

Potatoes are generally trouble free, apart from potato scab and blight. To prevent these, buy certified seed spuds and practise crop rotation, although you will find after a few years of growing potatoes that the plants pop up in every bed.

Potatoes are a great crop to get kids into gardening as you are pretty much guaranteed good results, and there is something special about harvesting spuds with your family – like digging for treasure. Give a person a bag of hot chips and you’ll feed them for a day, but plant a spud and you’ll feed them for a lifetime.