Spuds

I'd never attempted to grow potatoes before this summer, but the lure of a pack of seed potatoes for 99p (in the 99p shop, naturally) gave me the impetus to give them a go.  As we have absolutely no bare earth in our garden - it's all grass with a few fruit trees - they had to be planted up in large containers.  Two went into a hideous but extremely roomy grey plastic flowerpot I found at the top of the garden (it may well have blown over from somewhere else as I'd never clapped eyes on it before) and two went into a plastic growing bag.  Both lots were planted in the same compost and fed and watered identically but in the end the two plants put into the hideous plastic flowerpot produced 100% more than the ones in the growing bag.  No idea why, but I know what I'll be planting my seed potatoes in next summer.

I can't pretend it's a stunningly large crop of spuds but there are some that are a lovely big size and digging them out of the compost was like searching for lost treasure - very exciting to see what was coming to light with each spadeful of soil.  I'm going to use some of them in a homemade potato salad this evening - in honour not only of our first-ever home-grown spuds but also because it looks like this will be the last day of warm weather for the foreseeable future.

Comments

[Sandie]

Ooh what a wonderful treasure haul!

[French Knots]

Home grown spouds are the tastiest! We grew some on our allotment and the children were really excited to dig for treasure.

[ilona]

Glad your spuds have done well. You could turn your grass into bare earth for next year, by digging it ;o) Or do what I have done and make raised beds on top of the grass. Saves the poor old back.