Perfect Potatoes
Potatoes are great, aren’t they? They are a bit like me, wonderfully versatile 😉 As you all know by now, I am Lulu the Secret Blogger, and I like to update you on what is happening in my garden as well as lots of other general gardening wonderments. Today, I am mostly talking perfect potatoes (or top tatties!)
M&D have tried many varieties of potatoes over the years, some good, some not so good. They reliably informed me that one of their favourites was Maris Peer so that was what we chose to plant again this year. Way back in April, when it felt like summer would never arrive, we planted our seed potatoes in our raised beds. Over the months I watched with amazement as plants would poke through the surface of the soil which would then be covered over again with earth until they sprouted so high they were free to sun themselves. Flowers appeared and then, eventually, the foliage slowly started to die back. One day, Daddy announced it was time to dig deep in the raised beds and see what we could find – how exciting! Just like a treasure hunt. Here are some photos of how to successfully dig up potatoes, Lulu-style…
- First, dig and collect the potatoes. Be careful with your fork as you don’t want to spear all the potatoes and ruin them.
- Next, carefully inspect each potato. Teeny small ones, green ones & rotten ones are all discarded.
Quality control is very important when you are sorting perfect potatoes
- Then, carefully put the potato in the correct trug. One for good potatoes, one for the discarded potatoes. It’s important to remember which one is which!
Our trug full of lovely perfect potatoes
- It is very hard work so if you feel tired, have a wee lie down! They did say this was a raised bed!
Have a lie down in the veg beds – it is such hard work!
5. Serve them with some of the other lovely veg from your garden, yum!
A plate full of lovely home grown veg
We grew our potatoes in our raised beds but you can grow potatoes anywhere – in your flower border, in a pot, in a compost bag. They are super-easy to grow, really cheap and they taste so much nicer than supermarket potatoes.
Store your potatoes in a hessian sack in a cool, dry place like your shed or garage. They will keep well for a few months but keep checking on them and remove any that are starting to show signs of rot straight away.
Hope you have as much fun as I did digging (and eating) up potatoes! Click here to read about what else we have harvested this year.
Lulu
Harvest, Hooray!
I had a really fun weekend here at Vialii Towers with M&D. On Saturday it was really quite wet so we stayed indoors and did lots of fun arty projects with crayons, pencils, paints and glue! On Sunday the weather was a lot better which meant we could get outside and give the garden a bit of a tidy It was also time to harvest some of the fruit and vegetables we have been growing over recent months.
Now, regular readers will know that we had quite an array of vegetables we were growing this year. Some things didn’t do so well like the spring onions ‘cos someone kept climbing up onto the veg beds and lying there (1). And the cavolo nero suffered as the caterpillars decided they were going to get in there first (2)! Not to worry as we still had loads more things we were growing. Here is a pic of a few of the things we did manage to harvest at the weekend:
We harvested lots, from parsnips to chard and beetroot to turnips! Oh and some potatoes and apples too!
Lulu
1. I can’t imagine who that could have been!We had a scrummy dinner with the potatoes and Mummy roasted the beetroot, parsnips and courgette. Then she made a rhubarb crumble and a lovely Rhubarb & Lemon Cake.
2. Next year I am going to insist that we cover the kale in netting before butterflies can lay their eggs and caterpillars get munching!
Growing Our Own
This time last year we were in a bit of a tizzy as we had just had Lulu and every minute was taken up with our new bundle. We just about managed to throw a few seed potatoes and onion sets into our veg patch and not a lot else. Whilst family life is still our central focus we have managed to spend a bit more time in the garden already this year and started to get Lulu used to horticultural life. This weekend we managed to get all of our veg sown, and miracle of miracles it happened the same weekend as Monty sowed his on Gardeners’ World. (1). So here’s what we are looking forward to from our modest veg patch this year as we are growing our own…
Lulu shows she’s willing to muck in and help
- Potatoes: Last year we grew “Maris Peer” potatoes for the first time and we really loved their waxy texture and nutty taste. Perfect for boiling. So this year we stuck with what we love and gone with that again.
- Onions: Nothing out of the ordinary here. “Sturon” as our white onion, Red Barons for our erm, red onion (!) and “Golden Gourmet” shallots.
- Salad Leaves. Just a general packet of “Cut n Come Again”. We have left space for sowing another row in a few weeks too for some extra summer salads.
- Wild Rocket. A lovely addition to the above in our salads, over pizzas, stirred into pastas etc.
- Radish “French Breakfast”. Think we’ll leave the French to have these for breakfast but we will certainly enjoy them in salads. And they grow so quick! We have left space for succession planting on these too.
- Spinach “Bordeaux”. We’ll use this in both salads and cooked.
- Sweetcorn “Sweet F1”. We have never successfully grown sweetcorn before so this will be an interesting experiment for us.
- Squash “Sunburst F1”. Another first for us so watch this space.
- Turnip “Purple Top Milan”. We lovely the sweetness of baby turnips.
- Beetroot “Boltardy”. A staple in the Burt household. Great for both cooking and pickling (2)
- Leek “Musselburgh”. We love leeks for both soups and general cooking.
- Spring Onion “White Lisbon”. Another great addition to salads.
- Parsnip “Palace F1”. Another newbie for us. We we were running out of space so we have planted a few seeds in a pot to see what will come of it.
- Pea “Ambassador”. A firm favourite and although we will get limited crops as they have just been planted into a couple of troughs we will enjoy what we do get.
Our newly sown veg beds
Thanks for reading.
All at Vialii
If you need advice on planting veg or are interested in incorporating a “Grow Your Own” area into your garden please get in touch.
1. Only really because Monty, like the rest of country, was delayed by the awful Spring weather rather than us being organised but we will take it anyway! It will NEVER happen again!
2. Add a few of the shallots into the jar and a few peppercorns when pickling.
3. The gooseberry bush was a gift from our lovely neighbour who was getting rid of it.
4. We are hoping to get a decent crop of raspberries as Lulu LOVES them and is eating us out of house and home!
5.Our existing herbs are looking old and tired, a bit like the pots they live in. So our plan is to build some new pots from old pallets we have at our yard. Watch this space for a future blog on this subject…