…lurks the bin where I was storing my potatoes.
Well, I say ‘was storing my potatoes’, when in fact what I probably should have said was ‘was ignoring my potatoes in the hopes that they might magically go away’. Last year I grew way too many potatoes and despite a policy of aggressively giving them away to anyone who didn’t run away fast enough, come spring we still had many potatoes left over. Many many potatoes.* The bin, lined with newspaper, did a pretty good job of keeping them away from the light and the frost but eventually potatoes are going to start sprouting whatever you do and that’s what ours did. Although we kept on eating them longer than was probably a strictly good idea, in the end we had to admit defeat and start buying potatoes again.
Which left the ones in the bin.
I couldn’t put them in the compost, because that would basically amount to planting them. I couldn’t plant them because you’re not supposed to plant out your home grown potatoes. I didn’t really think they were bonfire material and it honestly didn’t occur to me for ages to just put them in the wheely bin like normal people and let the council take them away. So for the last couple of months they’ve been sitting in the corner of the shed, in the dark, giving me a vaguely anxious feeling every time I caught sight of their bin. I had no idea what was going on in there, but I had an idea it wasn’t going to be pretty. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to lift the lid to look in case some desperate light-starved potato tendril grabbed me and dragged me down into the depths to act as a ready supply of nutrients.
Well today, I finally nerved myself up (I asked the other half but he declined: risking life and limb to despider the bath is one thing, apparently, but tackling an army of ravening potatoes is quite another) and lifted the lid prior to tipping the lot into the wheely bin:
I was relieved to find they hadn’t gone all revolting – and none of them managed to grab me – but all those pale yearning shoots did leave me feeling rather sorry for them. I even toyed with the idea of just filling the bin with compost, Bob Flowerdew style, and letting them grow before I remembered that solving the ‘too many potatoes to eat’ problem with ‘growing more potatoes out of them’ wasn’t really going to get me anywhere.
* anyone who suggests growing your own is a way of cutting down on food waste, by the way, is completely insane. You don’t even know what wasting food is until you start growing your own veg. It’s actually one of the most stressful parts of having a veg patch.
Couldn’t you find something else to use the surplus for? For exmple, you could mount a front basket on your bike and use them as ammunition for white van man if he veers too closely.
To be fair, apart from the one shouter in a Ford fiesta, I don’t really have a problem on my bike, probably because there’s not much traffic about… still, if anyone want some ammo, it’s still in the wheely bin
Could you plant one of those things just to see what it grew into? An experiment on our behalf, if you like. Seriously, why aren’t you supposed to plant your own spuds?
Suppose what I’m asking is what actually makes seed potatoes different from ordinary ones. I am a spud ignoramus. (don’t know what’s happened to my login, sorry..)
You don’t plant your own spuds because of the likelihood of disease, specifically blight. It’s one of those things you *might* get away with – or might not. Given how damp we are here, it’s not really a risk I wanted to take
Thank you! I am enlightened. Makes perfect sense.
I have been growing potatoes for many years, and have never planted ‘seed potatoes’ except once because I got some free. I plant sprouted shop-bought potatoes or my own home-grown ones. I have grown them in Merseyside, Argyll, and Cumbria, and I have never, ever had blight.
Ah right. well, that’s the official advice anyway …
It’s clear to me you just don’t eat ENOUGH vegetables. We grew 100lbs of potatoes and managed to polish them all off between September and March BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE. It can be done. You just have to be committed to eating what you produce. Maybe you need to go back to your spreadsheets with renewed vigour and a greater understanding of the relationship between things planted and amount eaten…. I give salad away and the odd bit of kale but NOTHING ELSE. Make it your mission – effective growing is stress free growing. (Maybe though, you’re just better at growing things than I am… if I don’t manage to grow a SQUASH this year I may have nothing left to eat but my words.) And potatoes of course. Always potatoes.
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