Digging potatoes

by Charlie Peverett in At home on 25.07.08

Not everything’s gone according to plan in the vegetable patch this year. My carrots and runner beans got munched early on by slugs. The self-seeded courgette plant seems to produce only male flowers and the occasional football-shaped gourd. And don’t get me started on the onions.

In one bed, I planted a couple of rows of potatoes, the first time I’d ever tried them. Things didn’t look good from the off. My neighbour, a proper gardener with an allotment and everything, laughed at my chitted seed potatoes. They were pale and flaccid.

I was ashamed, and thought I’d plant them anyway, if only to get them out of sight. Almost as soon as I’d put them in, I looked at the packet and realised I hadn’t planted them at the correct depth. But by this point I couldn’t be bothered to resurrect them.

They grew surprisingly quickly and neatly, and the slugs didn’t seem interested. I left them to it, barely watering or tending them at all.

Fast forward a couple of months, and that particular bed has gone to pot. The courgette plant is a beast, albeit a virtually fruitless one. Nasturtiums (again, self-seeded) that seemed such a nice addition when they appeared in early June, have taken over. Didn’t realise at the time, but by letting them flourish I was effectively building a special slug accommodation area. There are now molluscs so big in there that I flinch a little before putting my hands in.

Consequently many of the potato leaves have been shredded, and are hanging limp and yellow. Every time I’ve walked past in the last few weeks they’ve made me feel bad. I’ve let them down. I’ve let my potato-eating family down. And most importantly I’ve let myself down.

Finally, on my way to the compost heap last night, I decided to pull one particularly sorry-looking individual out of the ground. Extracting it from the nasturtiums and bindweed (did I not mention the bindweed? Oh, yeah, I’ve been growing that quite successfully) I was amazed to see something in the roots. A potato. Not a shrivelled, rotten seed potato, but a shiny, firm yellow one, and pretty big too.

“Wow,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll get the odd potato after all.” A few seconds later and I had pulled out more from that one pathetic-looking plant’s roots than I could hold in two cupped hands.

They’re the most beautiful potatoes I have ever seen. I’m ridiculously excited about the propect of eating them for my supper tonight. I’ve heard a lot of people extol the virtues of potatoes, how quickly they grow, how productive they are and how fun it is to pull them out of the ground. I’d heard, but I’d not really believed.

Now I’m an evangelist. A spud lover. I’m the maincrop’s main man. A tater monger.

And if I can grow them, then anyone can grow them. FACT.

For proper advice on growing potatoes, see the Vegetable Garden Guide.