Sunday 17 July 2011

Plants and stuff: Potato harvest

Crikey, its been ages since I blogged about my garden, I bet you're wanting to know how all those there plants are getting on. Well, crazy excitement today as I brought in the first potato harvest of the year.

It was back in May when I last put up photies of my potatos, back then they were just poking their sprouty goodness above the surface and I named them all Ian. Ian's a good name for a potato. And crikey, in just two months, look how they've grown.
Until last week, Ian was a great sprawling mass of six potatos plants, but I tied all his stalks up to canes and he's looking a lot better for it.

But you know, the marvellous thing about potatoes is that you can get a quite a few harvests out of them each year, so this afternoon I thought I'd have go at this season's harvest. I used my trusty fork to dig up the first three plants.

The soil was pretty loose already, after a bit of forking you can just pick up the plant by its stem, give it a wee shake and all these potatoes come tumbling off.
Aye, some were huge and some were small. And they all looked great, apart from the green one which must have been too near the surface, if they get sunlight they generate chlorophyl and go a little poisonous, back to the garden with that one.

Anyhoo, once all the tubers have been harvested, I forked the soil a bit more, mixed in some compost, and replanted the plants.
I reckon I could dig them up again in September for another harvest. If and when the revolution comes, I'm ready to be self-sufficient on the spud front. Truly potatoes are a wonder plant.

This first batch of spuds we cooked by means of roasting and they were yum, see:-

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