Just chitting away...

Well here they are all lined up and sprouting their little hearts out. I've had to take over small boys bedroom windowsill which came in handy one night to bribe him to bed. He is now officially 'the potato watcher' he did discover pretty quickly that they weren't that exciting but it certainly worked for a few nights and he does consider them 'his' now.

We don't actually eat that many potatoes as a family since my middle boy has moved out, he is my 'meat and potato' boy, the younger ones are much better at eating their greens! So now we don't have to get so creative with including potatoes into every meal we just don't get through quite so many so I didn't really want to fill the plot with them. I was told that they are the thing to plant to 'sort out the soil' but I've also read somewhere that they are like a weed because you can never get every tuber and they just sprout up when you're not expecting them to, I don't really want to be taken by surprise by a potato so I've limited them to just one of the beds on the allotment.

I've bought a selection of Albert Barlett seed potatoes, 5 tubers of 6 different varieties. I did grow Anya last year in a pot in the garden, they were really tasty and good fun to dig up but I think I might have left it a bit late so it wasn't exactly a bumper crop.

I planted mustard in the bed last year as a green manure because I read that it keeps wire worm away...I don't know what wire worm is but I know I don't want it! I'm part way through writing a post on my green manure adventures (adventures might be making it sound a little more exciting than it actually is)so suffice to say there is a lot of digging to do before the mustard gives up its place for the potatoes and hopefully the wire worms (whatever they are) will have got the message...I'd certainly be scared of mustard!

I'll dig in plenty of manure and let them do their potato thing. I did once grow potatoes when I was a young teen in my dad's garden...(I was such a wild teen:)I'm sure I was wearing my DM's at the time though like all self respecting 80's teens!) and remember having to keep earthing them up as they grew to avoid green potatoes. I had no idea that potatoes were part of the nightshade family along with tomatoes and aubergines and it made me think about who was the first to risk eating them and finding out that they didn't kill them, not quite as brave (or stupid in my humble opinion) as the first one to risk eating a squid but even so I'm glad they did.

 So in the ground my little spuds will go if small boy will let them and hopefully we will have some lovely potatoes...might have to get middle boy round to help eat them...oo  might even get him to cook them!