Saturday 22 September 2012

growing pots

Do you remember this big bag of potatoes I bought for £2? After about a month of eating all sorts of potato dishes, only a shrivelled few were left in the bottom of the bag.

I've never been successful growing potatoes, but this was the opportune time to try again. I cut them up and put them in on the window ledge to sprout a little more. Apparently, this is called chitting. When the sprouts were about an inch long, I dug out a plot in the garden and planted them. Surprisingly, they grey into lush, bushy plants. I was patting myself on the back, even though it was probably due to all the rain we've had, not any care I took while planting them.

According to the BBC gardening website, potatoes must flower and die down a bit before they're ready to be harvested, so I waited in anticipated while they flowered. At this point I was positively smug. My mother used to always say: "pride comes before a fall," a message often lost to me and my siblings. It came to mind when I stepped out the kitchen door to find all of my plants had been devoured overnight by a hoard of snails. All the was left was a few scraggly stems. It looked like a goat had been in the garden.

I made a mental note to stop trying to grow potatoes them forgot about them. Last week, about a month after the potato disaster of 2012, I was digging in the garden and found these. My £2 bag of potatoes is still going strong. I can't wait to try again next year.

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