It’s time to get growing!

Have you ever grown your own chips, crisps, mash or roasties?

Potatoes are easy to grow, and are a great way of engaging children in learning where their food comes from.

If you are new to potato growing, Nick has written this easy to follow guide…

1. Start off by popping to Owl Lane; we have our new season seed potatoes in stock right now.
2. Now decide which potato you want. Do you want to grow new potatoes (which are so good with homegrown mint and lashings of butter) or would you rather grow maincrop potatoes?
3. If you are growing maincrop potatoes, do you want ones that al all rounders, or ones that roast really well, or that make creamy mash?
4. Do you have any particular favourites? If you are not sure, just ask for Nick and he will help you choose.
5. When you get home, put the seed potatoes in an old egg carton and stand them on the windowsill in a cold/unheated bedroom.
6. Before long they will get lovely stubby short green shoots, this is called chitting.
7. When Easter arrives, its time to plant them.
8. Either put one or two seed potatoes in a potato growing bag, with some sieved soil, or dig a trench in the vegetable garden, and pop them in on the bottom of the trench, and pull the soil back ontop.
9. When shoots start to come through the ground, keep pulling soil up and around the shoots, this helps the plants to produce more potatoes and will stop them going green.
10. When the plants flower the potatoes are forming, when the tops die down it’s harvest time…