Potatoes Planted!

The potatoes are in the ground and raring to go (hopefully). We are currently running about 3 weeks behind previous years at the allotment, and I guess everyone else is in the same boat. The weather in the last week has been not too bad. It has been sufficiently warm enough to warm the soil enough to enable the weeds to make an appearance anyway! What is depressing is that the weather forecast says that we are still only going to be reaching a high of 10C or so for the next 2 weeks. Furthermore, it looks like we are set to see a couple of frosts next weekend :(

In an attempt to catch-up with things a little I did a lot of seed sowing this week. The leeks that I sowed back in February are doing well and need moving. My single dahlia seed is also slowly growing.

The broad beans I planted ages ago are doing well and are in the coldframe. They will hopefully be making their way into the ground this week. I have never grown them before so I am looking forward to seeing how they get on.

Arrival of the Seed Potatoes

The seed potatoes I ordered arrived on Saturday. They look okay. A couple are on the small side, but hey ho. They are now destined for chitting. These are Belana, one of the three varieties of first earlies that we are growing this year....

Below are the Shetland Black. At first glance these appear not to have the vivid purple-black colour I was expecting from the picture on the website, however if you look very closely you can see that they are quite dark underneath the covering of soil . Hopefully I will be in for a pleasant surprise when I dig them up.

Finally, here are my maincrop potatoes for this year. These are Sarpo Mira. I only bought these because of their blight-resisting properties. Some people seem to like them, some don't. I've never tasted them, so I'll find out which camp I'm in later on this year.

Decisions, Decisions...

The weather has not been allotment-friendly of late. We had a lot of snow on Friday, which had turned to slush by Saturday, and now we have the delights of heavy rain and gales. Anyway, I thought it was best to start thinking about what to grow this year. Potatoes first....last year we grew, Sharpe's Express, Pentland Javelin, Pink Fir Apple, Kestrel, and Désirée.

The Sharpe's Express (above) and Pentland Javelin did well. Then disaster struck and we got blight (Potato Woes), so we had to move fast and dig everything up. The Désirée (above) did OK, but not fantastic as the potatoes were all on the small side. However, as you can see below the Kestrel and Pink Fir Apple crops were pretty disastrous.

So, what should I grow this year? After much umming and arring I plumped for Belana (first early), Shetland Black (second early), and Sarpo Mira (maincrop). I chose the Belana as I fancied growing a first early that I hadn't grown before, the Shetland Black because I like attempting to grow something unusual (and I thought the kids might be a little intrigued by their appearance), and the Sarpo Mira purely because of the fact that they are resistant to the evils of blight (as you may guess I am not feeling too optimistic about the weather this year!). 

I will probably end up growing some other varieties also. Despite an extrememly disappointing harvest in 2012, my Pink Fir Apple's gave me a really good crop in 2011 and I love their odd shape and their nutty flavour. On the recommendation of Flighty over at Flighty's Plot I may also have a go at growing Vales Emerald as I have never grown them before.

Potato Woes

So, this year we got blight. We've never been bothered by it before, but this year it struck us in mid-July. As soon as we realised what it was we cut them back, hoping that the potatoes beneath the ground would be ok, and that they would have had enough time to grow into nice big potatoes.

I dug up the Desiree crop first. So far so good, it wasn't great, but it wasn't a disaster either. The yield was reasonable, but the potatoes were on the small side.

Then I moved on to my favourite potatoes - Pink Fir Apples. I really love Pink Fir Apple potatoes. I have to say that I was gutted. Lots and lots of potatoes, but all of them were really tiny. The top picture shows my biggest Pink Fir Apple, the bottom shows the average size. :-( Really, really disappointed. Out of my whole crop I think I have enough to make enough mash potato for the 5 of us. I was still eating my Pink Fir Apples from 2011 in late Spring of this year. That definitely won't be happening this time around.

By now I really felt like going home, however it was still sunny so I thought I'd move on to the Kestrel crop. Not the best yield, but most of the potatoes were nice and big, unfortunately every one of them has split. I think this is weird because it hasn't affected any of my other potatoes. 

The thing about this somewhat disastrous harvest was that it made me realise just how lucky we are. For our ancestors who largely relied on the food they grew to survive, 2012 would have proved a very perilous year. Hopefully, 2013 will be better.

Finally...the First of the First Early Harvests!

It's been a long time coming, but this weekend was a momentous occasion as it marked the first potato harvest of the year. I think this is the latest first early harvest ever for us. Why so late? For some reason the first early's this year did not flower. Our second earlies and maincrop potatoes flowered ages and ages ago, so we waited patiently for the flowers to appear but not a single one did. I would like to blame the weather, but all the other potato plants flowered, and they are much bigger, so I really don't know.

Anyway, we took the plunge and dug a few Sharpes Express plants up, this was the yield from 3 plants. To be honest, I was really pleased as compared with all the other potatoes we have growing this year, these were the least impressive looking. I cooked them for 15-20 minutes and they were lovely :)  Sometime over the next week or so we will have to dig up some of the other first early's we have growing this year (Pentland Javelin and Arran Pilot) and see if they have been as successful. The other varieties we are growing are Wilja and Kestrel (second early's), and Desiree and Pink Fir Apple (maincrop). I love Pink Fir Apple potatoes! This year we have stuck to "old favourite" varieties. Last year I tried some of the heritage variety Mr Little's Yelthom Gypsy, they were really expensive to buy and I got barely enough potatoes for a meal for 2 from about 6 plants. I was really disappointed.

Fresh mint to go with the potatoes.

I also use the mint to make fresh mint tea in my Turkish teapot (çaydanlık). When I pick the mint I put it in a glass of water to keep it fresh for when I want to use it. The normal advice for making mint tea is to add sugar or honey to sweeten it. I don't do this as it is sweet enough already! All you need to do is to put the mint leaves in water, bring it to the boil, and let it brew for 5 minutes or so. If you want you can also add a teabag (black or green) to the mix, but I don't do that either.