Ooooh how I love potatoes – especially baby new ones! At this time of year, really they ought to be unheard of. We make a great fuss of planting them in early spring…whereas now is the time to be pouring over catalogues to select and order the varieties we enjoy.
But clearly someone didn’t dig all of them up in the early autumn (er…yes, OK that would be me!)….unseen ones obviously lingered deep beneath the soil, because half the same bed sprouted with a second crop! How lucky are we? This haul is from just a tiny patch I dug around one plant earlier this week. And…..a month or so ago, I naughtily decided to toss the last of the season’s old potatoes that had begun to sprout, into an empty bed…..as an experiment, to see what might happen through the winter months. It is now the healthiest vision of potato foliage I’ve ever seen here! Of course, we have yet to have a frost, so they may be completely wiped out, but I’m intrigued to see if we can indeed grow winter potatoes at Glenmore.
Of course, I know we are meant to start with new,certified seed potatoes,and we will…..in the spring. In another bed too. But I’m certainly not going to allow this lot to go to waste! You can see I thought I’d quickly ‘weed’ the garlic bed at the same time – the yield was a bounty of baby leaf amaranth, which was delicious tossed over garden fennel & roast chicken (as well as tiny new potatoes of course!). What a good 1/4 hour forage for dinner that was!