A Tater Story

by Annette Welsford No Comments
couch-potato

And now for a bit of light hearted fun! A Girl Potato and  Boy Potato had eyes for each other,and finally they got married, and  had a little sweet potato, which they called ‘Yam’. Of course,  they wanted the best for Yam. When it was time, they told her  about the facts of life. They…
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Why You Should Grow Disease Resistant Potatoes

by Annette Welsford 2 Comments

The great Irish famine of the mid-19th century shows us how vulnerable potatoes can be when it comes to disease. Potato blight, caused by a rampant fungus caused a massive crop failure throughout Ireland, leading to famine and starvation. Many of those who survived the famine decided to emigrate to far-off lands like North America…
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How to Harvest your Home-grown Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments

A successful potato crop will keep you stocked up with freshly grown potatoes for as long as eight weeks, from the time the plant flowers. The first potatoes you can harvest will be little, baby potatoes – normally referred to as “new potatoes”. This could be as early as six weeks after planting; be guided…
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How Potatoes Grow, Step-by-Step

by Annette Welsford 2 Comments

If you have never grown potatoes before, it is a good idea to familiarise yourself with the growing process of tubers, so that you can take appropriate and progressive action to ensure a successful crop.   While stems, leaves and flowers do form above the ground, it is the expanding section of the plant –…
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Growing and Cooking the Best Mashed Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments

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…
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Grow Different Coloured Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments

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…
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Have Fun with Potato Stamp Art

by Annette Welsford No Comments

Potatoes are not just a versatile and nutritious food, they can also be used to print fabric and other materials. While most children have a lot of fun making and then using potato stamps, creative adults can achieve lovely patterned effects easily, quickly and very cheaply. Fabric Painting and Stamp Art Fabric painting has been…
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Helpful Hints for Cooking Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments

  There are many different ways to cook potatoes, ranging from straightforward boiling, baking, roasting and frying, to some rather elaborate recipes that call for a host of other ingredients to be added to the potato. These helpful hints relate to some of the most basic methods of cooking potatoes successfully. Ten Top Tips for…
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Growing Healthy Potatoes

by Annette Welsford No Comments

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…
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Structure of the Potato

by Annette Welsford No Comments

Understanding how a potato is made – or structured – is not only interesting, but it also explains how we are able to reproduce potato plants from the tubers themselves. While true potato seed comes from the berries that form in the foliage of potato plants, this type of seed forms fewer and smaller tubers…
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