THE GOOD LIFE

Practical plans and advice for would-be smallholders

GROW YOUR OWN NEW POTATOES

THERE ARE TWO GOOD REASONS to forsake the bag of bland, floury potatoes on the supermarket shelf. Firstly, the simple pleasure – enjoyed by young and old alike – of unearthing ‘buried treasure’ that has been growing, unseen, beneath the soil. Then there’s the taste. Many shop-stocked potatoes are produced for shelf life and disease resistance, but grow your own and you can select the varieties that pack the biggest flavour punch. Harvesting fresh potatoes, then washing, cooking and enjoying them on your plate smothered in melting butter, you’ll only wish you grew more.

WHICH TYPE TO CHOOSE

Potatoes come in three main types – first earlies, second earlies and maincrops – named for when they are planted and harvested. The earlies include types that make delicious new potatoes, while maincrops store well. Unless you’re aiming for self-sufficiency, there’s little point in growing maincrop varieties; instead, concentrate your efforts on the flavoursome earlies that are tricky to find in the shops or expensive to buy. Try ‘Accent’, ‘International Kidney’ (which are the famous ‘Jersey Royal’ when they’re growing on the island), ‘Belle de Fontenay’ or ‘Charlotte’. Rather than using any potatoes lurking in your larder, you will need to buy ‘seed’ potatoes (online or from a garden centre), as these are guaranteed to be free of viruses.

WHEN AND WHERE TO PLANT

First earlies should be planted at the beginning of spring, while second earlies are early-to mid-spring and maincrops in mid-spring. Don’t worry if you’re short on space. They grow well in large containers and potato planters (essentially large, light-proof sacks with drainage) and taking this approach offers the additional benefit of protecting them from

slug damage. It also means you can choose a sheltered, sunny spot on a terrace where plants will grow more quickly – and can be harvested before blight strikes (the disease that can ruin potato crops in late summer), providing an earlier crop of small, nutty tubers for you to enjoy.

HOW TO LOOK AFTER THEM

In the vegetable patch, place the seed potatoes in a trench (around 15cm deep and 30cm apart), add a little manure or compost and cover with soil. As soon as the shoots come through, ‘earth them up’ (cover them over with another 15cm of soil). This allows more tubers to grow without being damaged by the light (which turns them green), as well as protecting them from late frosts. In a container, put around 15cm of compost in the base and no more than three tubers to a 40-litre pot. As the shoots emerge, keep covering over with compost until you reach the top.

Ensure the plants are well watered, especially if they’re in planters. You can start to harvest the earlies when their flowers are open (around 14 weeks after planting, but a week or two before this if they’ve been in a very sunny spot and you like to eat them when they’re small and tender). New potatoes are best eaten as soon as possible, so just unearth one or two plants at a time, leaving the rest in the soil for another day – if you can resist.