‘Potato Pete’ was a cartoon character from the WW2 era, whose job was to persuade people to fill up on homegrown potatoes rather than bread made from imported wheat. Potatoes made it into all kinds of recipes during the war, replacing some of the fat in pastry and even turning into dessert. The Ministry of Food published the Potato Pete Recipe Book, which you can read online.
Potatoes planted
21.08.2023 - 11:58 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
This year is the first I have ever planted my potatoes on the traditional planting day of Good Friday! They almost got the traditional addition of comfrey leaves in the planting holeas (which would have been another first!), but in the end I decided to leave the comfrey flowering for the bees. They need food more than my spuds do, at this time of year. Although, in the end, the spuds got something better…
There are two beds of potatoes this year, with three different varieties. One bed is home to two Sárpo varieties – the blue-skinned Blue Danube and the red-skinned Mira. They’re planted into a bed that tried (and failed) to grow a winter squash last year, and which is mostly garden soil with a little bit of compost. The Pink Fir Apples got the bed that grew my Shark’s Fin Melon last year; it started off the same, but got the compost from a couple of big containers emptied onto it, so it’s a bit nicer.
The potatoes are in beds in the extra strip of garden, the one that is next to the road and accessed by the footpath. I also keep my compost heaps there. I have been filling one that’s right next to the fence, so I can fill it from the path and not have to go into the garden (the entry for which is further away from the path). The first compost bin I set up after moving here is further in to the garden; I used it for a little while and then realised one by the fence was a better bet.
That one is getting full, so it was time to harvest the first compost from my new garden, and move the empty bin next to the fence, beside the second one. It wasn’t particularly full, but I got a couple of plastic trugfuls of compost – enough to put a good layer onto the bed with the Sárpo spuds. I reckon the compost was about a year old.
I have
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theunconventionalgardener.com
21.08.2023 / 12:05
How to store tubers for planting
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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3 planters planted
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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theunconventionalgardener.com
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theunconventionalgardener.com
21.08.2023 / 11:57
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theunconventionalgardener.com
21.08.2023 / 11:57
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