Spud me like..

Lifting potatoes is one of the principal pleasures of vegetable gardening.

With both hands, pull the mature stems with a twist … and like buried treasure, golden or red tubers spill onto the soil surface. 

Together, you and your tatties have had a journey.

You’ve queued at the Nottingham Organic Gardener's potato day and chosen your varieties…

You’ve mulched your garden vegetable beds with lovingly-made organic compost…

You’ve planted the potatoes with a trowel just below the soil surface - then, as the ground warms, watched the leaves emerge through the composted ground..

When the potato leaves (‘the haulm’) have lengthened, more compost is heaped (‘mulched’) around the stems to keep light away from the developing tubers.

The mulch is part of gardening magic as it..

• conserves water in the soil, 
• encourages worm activity which in turn adds fertility to the soil
• stimulates other beneficial soil invertebrates
• and promotes plant health by fostering soil bacteria and fungi. These connect to the potato roots providing a much-wider range of nutrients to the growing plant.

We don’t water. Even though we store around 7,000 litres of rainwater in tanks and water butts, we leave nature to take its course with our potatoes.

The spring and early summer was wet this year and so we had good growing conditions.

Here’s the results:

Charlotte (6 tubers planted) 8kg

Marfona  (6tubers planted) 13kg

Kestrel  (6 saved tubers planted) 5.6kg

Picasso  (9 tubers planted) 7.85kg

Alouette  (9 tubers planted) 8.35kg

Acoustic (6 tubers planted) 7.6kg

Total 50.4kg

Sarpo Una  (6 saved tubers planted) not yet lifted

We’ll bag or box the potatoes and they will store until spring.

Here’s the thing.

Gardening is great as you’re ’in nature’ with all the benefits that come from this. You’re getting your hands dirty which is great for the all-important gut micro-biome. You’re exercising!

Growing organically in undisturbed soil:

• reduces our exposure to harmful chemicals and plastic pollutants.
• confers health benefits as studies now indicate that food produced this way is more nutritious and contains more flavonoids, polyphenols and antioxidants.

It is also less-impacting as, for instance, every 1 tonne of commercially-grown potatoes will have required a staggering 35 tonnes of water. 

A footnote on reducing our ingestion of plastics to which growing our own organic, no-dig food can make a contribution to our long-term health..

Twenty-four brain samples collected in early 2024 measured on average about 0.5% plastic by weight.

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that microplastics are accumulating in critical human organs, including the brain, leading researchers to call for more urgent actions to rein in plastic pollution.

Studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels and bone marrow.