It’s now time to plant first early potatoes up here, especially with the weather being milder than usual and the soil warmer. I'll plant them fairly shallow, about 10cm deep and put cloches over to start with, then earth them up a little as they grow. This year I’m trying ‘Vales Emerald’, a cultivar that I haven’t grown before, and the old “Dig for Victory” era ‘Home Guard’.
I don’t know what it is about growing potatoes, particularly first earlies, but it always ends up having something of the scientific experiment about it. Even though we don’t need hundreds of early spuds, I can never just grow one type. It has to be a duel, or even a test of more than two, to see which gets closest to new potato perfection. Last year it was a resounding victory for ‘Pentland Javelin’ over ‘Rocket’, the latter being utter slug magnets. But I am yet to select my perfect “new potato”.
As we need reliable taters for storage, the competition element is slightly less for the second early and main crop potatoes. The pick of the bunch, and a potato which seems as happy growing up here as it did two hundred miles south and at sea level is the indomitable ‘Kestrel’, a thoroughly good “all rounder” which bakes, mashes, roasts, boils and probably chips too (I don’t make chips, so I can’t say).
 |
| Kestrel potatoes |
The most exceptional feature of ‘Kestrel’ is that it seems to be surrounded by a slug-proof force field when growing, so a very high proportion of the tubers are lifted unscathed even if you’ve neglected to defend against marauding molluscs. It is also stated to have moderate blight resistance, though as a second early, it’s usually ready to lift before that becomes too much of problem or at least the tubers will have developed sufficiently not to miss the top growth if it has to be cut off. They can get to a good baking potato size, but are usually a little smaller, but of good regular kidney shape, with purple marking round the eyes.
I first discovered ‘Kestrel’ about twelve years ago at the Whitchurch Potato Fair in Hampshire, and have grown them every year since with no problems. Except once.
One year, when we were still living in Hampshire, we had taken over a second, rather derelict allotment early in the year. We hadn’t been able to autumn dig it, so instead decided to try an Irish potato cultivation method we had seen at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, known as “lazy beds”. This involved taking off a row of spade-width turfs across the plot, and laying these, grass-down, on top of the ground to one side, then de-turfing two spits along and putting these turfs onto the ground alongside the first row, to make double rows of inverted turfs. Potatoes were then planted at each point where four turfs met.
Being partially of Irish heritage, it seemed appropriate to give this method a try; it might even have been employed by my Malone ancestors, I thought, even if with ultimately tragic consequences in the 1840s. A romantic notion worthy of a "Who do you think you are?" episode, though subsequent research suggests not, as great-great-great grandfather Malone was a tailor!
I don’t doubt that in light, peaty soil with soft Irish rain falling frequently upon it, "lazy beds" work a treat, with the turf stacks breaking down to give a good rich deep bed for the potato roots to expand into and the tubers to grow. On sticky Southampton clay during a dry summer, it is not so. The turfs are metamorphosed into concrete paving slabs and the potato tubers have to form between them. Consequently, we lifted square potatoes that year. Unfortunately, square crisps had not yet become trendy or we may have been on to a winner..
I don’t doubt that in light, peaty soil with soft Irish rain falling frequently upon it, "lazy beds" work a treat, with the turf stacks breaking down to give a good rich deep bed for the potato roots to expand into and the tubers to grow. On sticky Southampton clay during a dry summer, it is not so. The turfs are metamorphosed into concrete paving slabs and the potato tubers have to form between them. Consequently, we lifted square potatoes that year. Unfortunately, square crisps had not yet become trendy or we may have been on to a winner..
