Posts Tagged ‘growing potatoes’

Colourful Potato Varieties

by Annette Welsford No Comments
colourful potato varieties

Colourful potato varieties are a fun way to explore the many flavours and textures of potatoes. They look great in place of traditional potatoes, and are packed with nutrients. These specialty varieties may be hard to find, so you may have to grow your own. Purple Peruvian The purple Peruvian is a fingerling potato with deep violet skin ...

Potato Growing Success Story in the UK

by Annette Welsford No Comments
growing potatoes

We were delighted to receive a wonderful email from one of our valued customers who purchased our book How to Grow Great Potatoes, an avid potato grower who lives in the UK. He has had great success this growing season and kindly shared his experiences with us. Potato Growing with Rhys Jaggar Rhys Jaggar lives in London, ...

21st Century Infectious Potato Disease

by Annette Welsford No Comments
05 12Dickeya in Potato2

A really nasty seed-borne bacterial blackleg disease, Dickeya solani is causing concern to potato farmers. First identified in Holland in 2005, Dickeya solani is an aggressive form of another type of blackleg disease, Dickeya dianthicola that has established itself in several countries in Europe, including Spain, France and Belgium, as well as in Finland and Poland. It has also spread to the ...

Growing and Cooking the Best Mashed Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments
Mashed potato

Potatoes are a staple and potentially delicious food, although a large number of people are surprisingly unimaginative and uninventive when it comes to cooking processes.   Mashed potato is a perfect example of a dish that may be totally mundane, or marvellously cordon bleu!   At its most mundane, mashed potato is made by boiling the tuber and then ...

Grow Different Coloured Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments
coloured potatoes1

Many people think of potatoes as being dull-looking, brown-skinned vegetables that you can bake, boil or fry. But not only are there numerous ways to cook the common potato, there are also a multitude of different types of potato – more than 5,000 varieties in all. Perhaps even more surprisingly, potatoes come in a myriad ...

Growing Healthy Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments
potato plant

There is nothing much that beats harvesting a good, healthy crop of potatoes, particularly if you have grown them yourself. While there are many ways to cook potatoes, good healthy home-grown potatoes need nothing more than a rinse before they are cooked. Boiled or baked in the skin, and topped with a knob of butter or ...

Potatoes are a Cleaning Crop

by Annette Welsford No Comments
potato plant

In some parts of the world, particularly Europe, potatoes are considered to be a cleaning crop. This is something to take into account, particularly when it comes to crop rotation, and in gardens where weeds are a problem. Of course whatever veggies you are planning to grow, it is vital to prepare the ground well ...

The Best Climate for Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments
coloured potatoescoloured potatoes

While potatoes are grown all over the world, some do better in some climatic conditions than in others. The sad part though is that in most parts of the world, the potatoes that we immediately recognise are limited to the few types that commercial growers have chosen.

Protecting Your Potatoes From the Cold

by Annette Welsford 1 Comment
Potato Igloo

Potatoes are easy to grow but prefer cool weather, so it is important to plant them at the right time to take advantage of that.  The right time to plant depends on your climate. Since it takes potatoes two to three weeks to emerge from the ground, the earliest you should plant seed potatoes in ...