Christmas potatoes

In the late Autumn, to make use of one of the newly made raised beds, we planted Charlotte seed potatoes, 9 in all, although one was small and did not thrive well.

Due to the warm weather the greenery grew fast and high and outstripped my efforts to earth up the sides. Once the colder weather came along, the potato growth was covered in fleece to help protect the plants.

By the time we had arrived back from China, the growth had all died down, some taken by frost and some died back naturally.

Today I thought I would see if any potatoes actually grew from the seeds- the first plant (the runty one) yielded a few small ones, and as I worked my way along the row more and slightly larger ones came to light.

By the end there were enough to have a meal of new potatoes with the family over Christmas.

                                                       Trug of potatoes fresh from the garden.

So the experiment was worth it!