Ah, autumn – ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ in the language of Keats, but we’re all a little too busy for spouting poetry; far more concerned with sprouting potatoes! Ah-hem. Think our rhyming needs a bit of work, but let’s let the crops speak for themselves…
Gulp.
When we were tending our tomatoes and sunning our strawberries in June and July, we were kind of under the illusion that it was all about pottering around in the garden; that we could don a straw hat, wander around with our retro watering can and, after a few weeks of said wandering and watering, we’d see results! Plump juicy fruit, ripe for picking!
Long into the summer did we linger in this state of green-fingered high spirits – sowing and planting, thinning and watering, even some light weeding – but now harvest time is here, and, well, the proof is in the pudding, or the pie, or the soup.
But hold your horses, don’t light the stove just yet. First, there’s work to do…
Potato lifting. (This is hard.)
We refer to the superior knowledge of the Allotment and Garden Guide for September 1945, which seems to suggest we can bask in a moment of smugness if we manage to pull off – or up – a full store for when the nights start drawing in. To quote: ‘Assuming the weather has not been too unkind and the pests not too troublesome, he [the gardener] can smile at the abundance that will be his squirrel’s store for the late autumn and winter days that lie ahead’.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Putting the cart before the horse. Firstly, a fortnight before you want to lift your spuds from the ground, you need to cut off the tops – the Ministry of Agriculture advises having a bonfire for these stems ‘if there is the slightest suspicion of blight’.
Two weeks later…’choose a fine day’ for lifting. (That’s official government advice, by the way – don’t venture into the garden in the rain as you need to leave the potatoes on the ground for four or five hours to dry. Plus you’ll be soggy and miserable!) So, by this stage, we’ve had a bonfire and done some gardening in the sun – slightly sore backs, but quite good fun – but now comes the storing.
By far the easiest method is to store your potatoes in boxes or barrels, lined with old newspapers to protect against frost. But if you’ve got more potatoes than Potato Pete himself (see In the Kitchen: February) would know what to do with, then you may need to build a clamp, as outlined in the pages below. We’re afraid we can’t show you one we made earlier, but if anyone is inspired to create their very own potato clamp, we’d love to see the finished result! You’ll need lots of straw, spadefuls of soil and oodles of patience, but, if you get it right, you’ll be baking, roasting, boiling, mashing and frying potatoes all through the winter. Don’t forget to share your favourite potato recipes with us too!
