Potatoes get season started

Nothing shouts ‘Spring’s coming!’ to me quite like buying seed potatoes. Along with sowing sweet peas, they are one of the very first crops I think about in the new gardening season.

Of course, it’s far too early to plant them out yet – I usually wait until around Easter, depending on the weather – but just the sight of them sitting in old egg boxes, slowly sending out shoots makes me feel better.

I’ve grown potatoes for years with choice often dictated by name when my children were small – hence one year we grew ‘Asterix’ and ‘Obelix’. Incidentally, the ‘Obelix’ spuds were three times the size of ‘Asterix’.

Nowadays, I tend to favour tried and tested varieties, such as ‘Red Duke of York’, ‘Mozart’ and ‘Victoria’, and early, salad potatoes that are harvested before the slugs get to work or blight starts to hit.

Last year, because I decided to grow more brassicas, I limited myself to just two potatoes: ‘Annabelle’ and ‘Belle de Fontenay’ and put some in the ground and the rest in tubs, an excellent way of growing spuds, if you’ve got little garden space.

Although watering can be more of a chore with container-growing – especially in last year’s hot summer – I like it because it does free up border space for something else. Also, the slugs don’t seem to find the tubers as easily and there’s no danger of leaving a stray spud when you harvest only to have it reappear the following year in the midst of another crop – such potatoes are known as ‘moochers’ in our house.

The best way to buy seed potatoes is to go to a potato or seed day as you generally get more choice. I buy mine from Dundry Nurseries on the outskirts of Cheltenham, which has hosted an annual potato day for the past 22 years.

Tubers are 20p each and you can buy as little as one – great for trying new varieties – right up to 25kg sacks.

This year, nursery shop manager James Mclean said he is hoping to eventually have 140 varieties available – when I visited 106 had already arrived with more due by the potato weekend on January 19th and 20^th and the rest in the coming weeks.

Dundry has nearly 20 new varieties this year including ‘Purple Rain’, a second early that makes good chips, and ‘Lipstick’, a red main crop that keeps its colour when cooked.

“They are both what is known as American ‘heirloom’ or ‘farmers’ market’ varieties,” explained James.

‘Liberty’, another main crop, is good for showing as it produces very white tubers, while ‘Primabelle’ is a first early salad variety with waxy tubers.

The nursery is also expecting two exclusive varieties from Ireland: ‘Celebration’, a second early with red and yellow skin, and ‘Damask’, a red main crop all-rounder.

People travel from across the region for the annual potato day and there were lots of customers buying ahead of the weekend event.

I’ve decided to grow ‘Annabelle’ again in two of my tubs and to try the new ‘Primabelle’ in the third. And, despite a space crisis, I couldn’t resist picking up a dozen tubers of ‘Charlotte’ that will be squeezed into the main raised beds. The growing season is now underway.

• The Potato Weekend at Dundry Nurseries is on Saturday and Sunday, January 19 and 20, 2019, from 9am to 5pm. There will be refreshments available, advice on growing potatoes and stalls run by local gardening groups. Entry and parking are free.

Join me for the 2019 gardening season by following this blog.