potatoes for free!

Last summer I grew potatoes from nothing, so to speak.  This year I've done the same.

I'm sure you must all have come across potatoes in your vegetable rack that look like this?  Yes?  So you snap off the growths and get on with preparing them for eating, yes?  No!  Not if you want free potatoes, you don't.

Cut off the growths with about an inch of the potato, and plant it in the garden.  Sometimes you can cut a potato in about half a dozen pieces, each with a shoot on, and plant each of them.  Each piece will grow into a potato plant, yes, really, each one a new plant.  Each plant will produce a crop of potatoes.

Admittedly, the crop will not be as large as from a seed potato, but then it's cost you nothing but a little time and effort.  The magic of nature works for you - aren't you lucky?

That's what I did about 3 weeks ago, and look at the growth they've put on!!  To obtain a larger yield of potatoes, simply pile earth up against the stems of each plant.  The obliging potato will generate new roots into this fresh soil, and they will produce the tubors for you.  Even better magic, and more free food :-)

free food update, potatoes

Yesterday I dug up some of my free potatoes, as you can see. It's such a pleasure to discover just what the harvest will be. Sometimes there are very few tubers, others there are loads. That's one of the good things, though, you just never know what's below the surface. It really is digging for buried treasure!

This time I was very pleased. There had been three plants appeared, quite close together, in this spot of the garden. Presumable tiny tubers left behind last time I dug some up, as I had not planted them myself.

You can see how beautiful they are. The colander shows the small ones, the larger ones are beside them. Some of them had been nibbled by slugs, but the majority are beautiful. Firm golden nuggets to enjoy, simply

boiled, along with some freshly picked runner beans and sliced carrots. I stirred in a tin of chickpeas, and made a lemon and garlic mustard dressing which I poured over whilst the vegetables were still hot. Yummy.

The dressing was juice and zest of two lemons, 1 good clove of garlic, 1 tablespoon of mild mustard, and about 100 mls of olive oil. Whizzed together and seasoned with a lilttle salt this makes a refreshing, tasty dressing for warm veg.

It's raining

Today it's raining. I expect most of you are groaning at that. Not me. The garden is really dry, and appreciates the good, long, refreshing drink it's receiving. Much better than me taking cans of water from the water butt and allocating water to each plant individually, or, horror of horrors, using the hose pipe, which I have resorted to on a few days, when it's been really dry and sunny.

This way there's a good reservoir of water building up underneath all my thirsty vegetable plants, that they can tap into when their roots get far enough down. There are 23 runner bean plants now, in two beds, preparing to twine up the arches, which are waiting above them. With so many plants thriving - and I have to say, there is very little evidence of slug damage, probably due to the fact that these are the new beds that David built for me, and all the soil is sieved and mixed with my own produced compost - I'll be able to pick the beans when they're very young, which will be a real treat. Normally I'm left with only a handful of plants once the pests have feasted on their organic treats. I can quite understand why they prefer my vegetables - I'm sure they must be as health conscious as the rest of us!

The broad bean seedlings are now a couple of inches high, and I'm looking forward to their lovely, furry pods of beans. If I'm lucky, I might get to freeze some, you never know.

The baby turnips, Snowball, I think they are, form a green mat at one end of a bed. I transplanted a dozen or so, to thin them out, and the next day they looked terrible, wilted and browning, despite my watering them. However, yesterday, they had perked up, recoverd beautifully, and their siblings have more room to grow in the original site. Yippee!

The Jerusalem artichokes are growing again, and some potatoes I failed to spot last year when harvesting are shooting up. Food for free, so to speak. I remember when I was very young, Mum would cut sprouting eyes from potatoes, and plant them in the ground. She epxlained that during the war, that's what people did to save money and resources. I found it amazing then, and still do today. It really is free food - and organic too - brilliant.

So, it's raining, and I'm pleased. Maybe you'll be less bothered by it now, too.