My patience/tight-fistedness was rewarded on Sunday with the long-awaited announcement that Thompson and Morgan were doing free Postage and Packing for two days, and as I hadn't spotted my old faithful 'Kestrel' or blight-busting 'Sarpo Mira' at the garden centres locally, I promptly ordered them online, getting 20 of the Hungarian heroes for a mere £2.99 into the bargain. These, with my purchases from Ryton, would do for this year.
Or so I thought until college yesterday morning and the announcement from tutor Harry Delany that he had a 'feeling in his water' that it was time the RHS Practical groups had a go at growing First Early potatoes, that he intended to allocate us a different cultivar each, as far as possible, and that the master plan was for us to grow our potatoes with the aim of achieving competiton standard results for the first Potato Day the college had ever organised, intended for 22nd June.
And it would be us - 'The Monday Group' - versus 'The Friday Group'. Being mild-mannered, eco-friendly, ethical gardeners, it took only seconds for mutterings about 'sabotage' to be heard. For shame, colleagues! I was all in favour of doing things fairly and squarely until I noticed that Harry's initial plan to allocate cultivars around the room in the order on the board would leave me with 'Rocket' - a nice spud, but slug-prone, in my experience - but luckily someone before me also disputed their allocation, and so there will be a draw once Harry has the spuds. Unless we have a choice of our own we'd prefer...
On that basis, I have already secured what I trust will be my secret weapon. Using the on-going T&M free P&P deal, I've ordered myself a bag of 'Ulster Sceptre', a cultivar not available from Bridgmere and a wee bit dearer than the rest, but regarded as a good 'doer' for many years and interestingly, also known as 'Cheshire potatoes' for their popularity in that county...
...which just so happens to be the county they're going to be grown in for this competition!
Apparently we'll also be taught the dark arts of selecting, cleaning and presenting our best spuds for exhibition, which will stand me in good stead if the Crown Bank boys decide that purple spuds aren't an abomination in the sight of the Lord after all, but our secret weapon in a few autumn Horticultural shows.
I'm also determined to make a decent effort at growing peas and beans this year, again stocking up on a few new ones to trial on the allotment. I simply couldn't resist a packet of maincrop peas called 'Kenobi', though whether the Force will be strong enough with them to keep the slugs and flea-beetles at bay remains to be seen!
