Thoughts on New Potatoes.

 Charlotte potatoes remain one of my favourite varieties to grow.

Reasons I like to grow First Early Potatoes.

•  Home grown Charlotte potatoes are out of the ground before blight has a chance to strike ( most years but the British weather is strange and one year we had to harvest early as the leaves started to show signs of being attacked) .

• The earlies are a treat to have as there is no need to store you can dig them out or unearth a few at a time when you want to, once they are ready. 

• Left a bit longer they get a bit bigger and the first smaller ones are really nice.  

• Charlotte potatoes are a great ones for serving with salads and have that slightly 'earthy' taste that home grown new potatoes should have. They are 'classified' as waxy which indicates types suitable for eating simply boiled and served as they are with butter and maybe cooked with a sprig of mint. However I have had no problem roasting them and cooking them in other ways but think it would be a waste of the variety to mash them. They are never in the ground long enough to grow to a size needed for large baking potatoes. 'Floury varieties' of potatoes, can work better for mashes and baking and the  types that mature later can often be stored while early types are best eaten close to the time when you lift them.

New Potatoes - the first meal with this years grow your own new potatoes!

I love that the first time you sit down to a meal that has your very own grown new potatoes on the plate. They nestled beautifully next to a salad of mixed salad leaves that were also freshly harvested from the allotment only an hour earlier. Now I just need the tomatoes to start producing and the own grown salad season will be in full swing. Does that not make the effort of watering them in the dry spells and planting them when you have not really got time worth while?  - Yes it certainly does - nothing tastes like a newly unearthed new potato with freshly picked salad.

Not sure how to tell if your new potatoes are ready? Want the best way to harvest few of your new potatoes at a time? I have a HubPages article on this here is the link.

New-Potatoes. How to harvest your new potatoes.

BTW - the method of removing a few potatoes from the plant without digging it up is called furtling.

Early summer on the allotment -

Early summer update - I ave just written an article on HubPages about the seasonal things happening at my allotment. It includes seasonal problems and the anticiapated pleasure of harvesting some new potatoes soon.



here is the link to the article