Potatoes, sweet and good
We have dug our first potatoes, and boy are they good! You only realise how stale most vegetables are when you eat them really fresh, and get to appreciate the difference. We steamed these, cut some chives over them and added a dab of butter. Bliss. The children ate them like they were lollies which isn’t surprising because the did taste sweet!
Tonight we had to use up some of the old, shop-bought potatoes before going to harvest another lot of our own. The shop bought ones tasted of cardboard by comparison.
Potatoes have to be the easiest things to grow, although they do take up a lot of room. Early spring is the best time to plant, but you can give it a go at just about any time of year. We didn’t get ours in until October. You can buy special seed potatoes, or else just throw some sprouting potatoes into the ground, cover with dirt or compost or mulch, and wait. As soon as the plant flowers you can harvest little new potatoes, or wait until the whole thing dies to dig the main crop. If you have limited space you can just pile up tyres and thrown the spuds, then progressively cover with dirt or mulch as the plant grows. When you are ready to harvest just kick the tyres over.