Potato Harvest Second Earlies Up!

We’ve finally got the last of the second early potatoes up. These last were two new-to-me varieties, British Queen and Epicure. Yields in terms of volume / weight are similar but the British Queen have more small tubers in the mix than the Epicure.

British Queen Potatoes just harvested in the wheelbarrow

Introduced in 1894, British Queen have become a little rare in the UK they’re popular still in Ireland.  Actually holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit, that’s a good advert in itself. Flavour is quite special, they make brilliant chips too.

Epicure arrived three years after British Queen and as the name suggests, renowned for their flavour. When you consider how many new varieties of potatoes are introduced, it’s surprising how many of the most popular potatoes today have been around so long.

Sorting Potatoes

Since the weather has changed with the skies donating some much needed rain, spent a couple of hours in the shed sorting the potatoes. Traditionally the potato harvest was sorted into three. Ware ( for eating), seed for next year and chats which were for the animals – pigs and poultry usually.

Seed Potatoes

Nowadays we don’t encourage using your own seed potatoes. The reason is that there are viral potato diseases which can be in the seed tubers. Personally I’d say the ideal is to use new seed potatoes each year but if the crop appears healthy I’ll bend the rule and use my own seed tubers the following year. This saves some money and ensures supply.

Chat Potatoes

Chat potatoes are the ones not worth storing for eating. Damaged by worm, slug or fork being the most common reason. Some are just too small to be worth the bother. Chats for animal feed are no longer the norm. The urban pig, often shared by a few families and fed mainly on waste has gone the way of the dodo, killed by regulation and sensitive to smell neighbours.

Although most home poultry keepers will give their hens treats, feeding the traditional mash made of kitchen waste to supplement their grain is illegal. Personally I think that it’s unreasonable to govern home kept hens with the same laws as commercial producers but the law is the law. The other consideration is that modern breeds of hen produce far more eggs than their ancestors. Like fine tuned machines they require high-quality, properly formulated food to keep them healthy.

Potatoes in Store

Ware Potatoes

These are carefully checked over and placed in hessian sacks in the store. The sacks allow them to breathe so moisture evaporates away. This helps prevent rot. In each sack I drop a label with the variety – it’s a bit like a wine cellar in there! You wouldn’t want a Chateau Margaux with your fish or serve Charlottes mashed.

Any damaged that won’t store well are stored in a separate ‘use first’ bag in the kitchen.

Flavour

On the topic of potato flavour, this varies more than you might think. Of course the variety makes the most difference but, just like a wine with terroir, the growing conditions and soil make a difference.

Because soil varies season to season depending on what nutrients are or are not available and weather is rarely the same two years in a row, the flavour changes somewhat. For example: the addition of base fertiliser may increase yield but the absence of micro-nutrients diminish flavour.

Amount Grown

I’ve grown far too many potatoes this year but I had good reason. With all that was going on with the pandemic, I was somewhat concerned we were going to get some food supply problems. You cannot live on potatoes alone, at least for long, but they are an amazing food crop. So many ways to cook them that they need never become boring.

Anyway, we can give the surplus away. For starters I gave half a carrier bag to the farmer across the road who gave me the mountain of sheep manure back at the start of 2020. He will be getting more, along with unsubtle hints that we’ve used up the manure now.