Trying to Grow Potatoes

This year I’m going to be trying to grow a few crops that I didn’t even look at last year.

The first one is potatoes.

They’re not exactly the most exotic of vegetables in many respects, but there is a huge variety of different potatoes available, even if the local supermarket only sells one or two of the more common strains.

While I could have gone down the route of digging out drills for potatoes like my grandfather used to do many many moons ago I opted for a more compact method.

Grow bags.

My thinking is that they’ll be a little neater and possibly a small bit easier to manage. Of course it’s a compromise. But I can live with that.

As you can see from the instructions above, it’s pretty simple and quite compact. So I’m hoping that I should be able to get a reasonable crop in a fairly small area of my patio.

Part of my rationale for growing my own food is that it allows me to get my hands on varieties that I can’t access easily in the local shops. With the potatoes it’s the same, so I’ve chosen a couple of varieties that piqued my interest:

• Purple rain – they’ll be purple all the way through.
• Maris piper – a fairly common variety which is most often used for chips.

When I was in Peru a couple of years ago I remember being blown away by the varieties of potato available – there are literally hundreds in common use! So far I haven’t had much luck finding sources for many varieties beyond the main ones, though there are still a number of places that sell a large variety.

Fingers crossed that my potatoes will work out!