Potatoes and Garlic (what no shallots?)…

We have enjoying eating the ‘Charlotte’ potato crop over the past few weeks (even this late in the season).

I’ve posted many, many times on the different ways I grow potatoes, but what has always been a consistent is I grow them in containers.

I had a 2 year love of small, black exhibitors bags (with one seed potato in each, so you can just turn it out for a single meals worth of spuds, as seen above on the right), but this year I just chucked a number of chitted tubers into two of my extra-large plastic containers.

It worked a treat.  When we came back from our holidays, the tops were all gone so I just covered the pots with plastic sheets to stop them getting too wet, leaving the crop undisturbed until we wanted to eat them.  I then just dug around in the soil and removed as many as we wanted for each meal.  I know this works fine, in past years there has always been at least one abandoned bag that when turned out in Spring has still had some edible tubers inside.  It always amazes me how long they can just sit in the soil and still be good, but as the garden is taking on a permanent damp feel, I think any final spuds will have to be removed this weekend.

My plan for next year is to grow them the same way.  I have gone for a change in variety and have ordered some ‘Lady Christl’ from Thompson and Morgan.  The blurb reads:

‘Quickly became a customer favourite for its good yields of very early, firm, oval, smooth, pale yellow-skinned tubers. The creamy flesh has an excellent flavour as a new potato and remains firm on cooking. This RHS AGM variety bulks up quickly as a first early, or leave it as a second early if larger tubers are required. With good disease resistance, including golden eelworm, Potato ‘Lady Christl’ is easy to grow and well suited to growing in containers and potato bags’.

I just fancied something new and they have a 5 star customer rating and a RHS Garden Merit Award.  I normally order my seed shallots at the same time as my potatoes, but I haven’t bothered with them, no idea why, they didn’t do well for me this year (first time ever, to be fair) and I have 2 less raised beds (more on that another time) so I need to remove a few of my staple crops.

This year I also went back to ordering my garlic from the Isle of Wight Garlic Farm.  I seem to remember that the ones ordered from T & M last year were fine, but they weren’t exactly massive and I was very pleased when these huge beauties turned up.  As you can see, I added a few extras to the order, the P&P made it a necessity, it’s not silly expensive or anything, but in comparison to just ordering 4 garlic bulbs it feels so.

I’ve been out in the garden all day today.  I feel like I’ve really been putting it off, to the point that the jobs had become overwhelming, but I’m pleased to say after a full day digging, planting (bulbs) and clearing leaves I feel a little more in control.  We are hoping for a fine weekend so we can move a lot of junk, my important stuff into the shed and free up some space in the house, there are also huge amounts of leaves that need clearing after our recent storms brought them all down.  I’m hoping that now the momentum has started, I’ll keep going and will finally feel pleased to look out of the window, instead of a slight feeling of guilt at the poor, neglected garden.