This page is for photos and items about the fruit and veg I'm growing, plus favourite recipes for using it.
I've always enjoyed trying out new potato varieties for taste, slug resistence and resistence to diseases, and while I have a few trusted cultivars that I wouldn't be without ('Kestrel', the best of the slug-proof 2nd earlies, which keeps well enough to store like a main crop, and 'Sarpo Mira' for blight resistence), most years I grow six or seven others.
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2008 spud trials, including Cara, Edsell Blue,
Shetland Black and Highland Burgundy Red |
The reds amongst this collection of roast potatoes with rosemary are the delicious "Highland Burgundy Red" - they roast well in their skins as the flesh goes wonderfully fluffy, but peeled they tend to disintegrate as roast spuds. HBRs also make the most wonderful mashed potato - if you aren't fazed by the pink colour.
Shetland Black were a novelty that I probably won't grow again, mainly because they are so well camouflaged in garden soil by their dark skins that they are easily mistaken for round pebbles. Actually, this means I probably will grow them again whether I plan to or not - this year, a couple of rogue plants appeared in the Kestrel patch, and if there are unexpected spud plants in the same bed this year, they are most likely to be Shetlands. They also turn the cooking water a disconcerting "Bordeaux Mixture" turquiose shade!
These are 'Kestrel' potatoes, and to paraphrase a well-known lager advert, I reckon they are probably the best taters in the world. Superbly slug-resistant and very versatile (mash, boil, bake, roast and probably chip too - I don't do chips), I've also never had a blight problem with them, as they're a second early, so usually out of the ground before trouble starts (though they are listed as moderately resistant). I have kept them successfully until March for eating, though you will be knocking the eyes and shoots off them at this stage.
2011 also gave us an excellent crop of 'Pink Fir Apple' potatoes, a Victorian (or earlier) cultivar. These are a main crop potato, usually regarded as a salad potato, but also make great roasters. They grew surprsingly well in a relatively dry, shady plot this year, came out of the ground with remarkably little slug damage and have kept really well with no signs of sprouting eyes at the time of writing (late February).
The only drawback (and not all readers may regard it as such) is that they can look like something you'd get from Ann Summers rather than Thompson and Morgan!
I did warn you I was a bit of a spud geek, didn't I?
