Potato Harvest

This is the fourth year of growing potatoes here, and every year I say it's just not worth the effort.  And yet every year I end up growing some!  We can buy huge sacks of cheap everyday spuds and small sacks of  really nice interesting potatoes, for a price.



The first year we grew charlotte and, ironically like most things just shoved in the unimproved clay, they did pretty well.  We didn't buy spuds until Christmas and that was only really so we could have some whoppers to soak up the goose fat.

The next year I put in a half a dozen varieties, a few of each, but all prized for their flavour and eating quality.  The slugs had a field day on the foliage, munched their way through most of the tubers, well half of all of them, and then blight got the rest.  They were expensive and the yield was minimal.

We reverted back to charlotte for year three, using one of the newer beds which had pretty rubbish soil, just like the whole plot in the first year.  They hardly grew, the tubers were tiny and then - you guessed it - blight felled the lot.  Never again.  I'd rather use the space to grow flowers or more chillies.

But this year I was seduced by a bag of pink fir apple at a brico store.  The dreadful spring conditions meant they were late going in, but they then grew well and nightly slug picking kept the foliage in reasonable nick.  We started harvesting at the end of August, just pulling a plant here and there as we needed them.. Yield was poor to average and the flavour remarkably unremarkable.  But they didn't get blight.

The last lot was dug last week, and resulted in yet another week of horizontal living as my bulging disk in my back bulged.  But the yield had clearly improved, despite the foliage having died down a few weeks ago.  We didn't get blight and the slug damage is for the first time trivial. 

So why am I still saying that I'm really not going to bother next year (apart from the bad back)?  This time, and probably due to not getting blight, the tubers have been left in the ground too long.  I read that you need to do this to allow the skins to firm up and improve keeping quality.  Well, they certainly have done that; the skins are thick and hard with a slightly bitter taste.  As a consequence the spuds will have to be peeled for eating, or at least scraped vigorously.  Pink Fir Apple, with all their knobbles and crevices do not lend themselves to peeling.

I wonder what I'll be growing and cursing next year?