How to play along at home, part 1 - PO-TA-TOES!

The most annoying thing about a convert is the zeal with which they try and get you to join them. Try talking to anyone who's still in the honeymoon phase of going to the gym about how you're struggling with your fitness and they'll be ready, eager and keen to sign you up, full of helpful suggestions about how you could come with them, there's a class that you'd just love and you'd feel so much better! You rarely get the hardsell from a long-time gym member, but you'll always get it from the person who's been going for 3-9 months and is pleasantly surprised to find that they're enjoying themselves.

It's hard to blame them really. It's a sign they like you - they're enjoying themselves and they want to to be happy too. And it's so easy now that they're in the swing of it!

With that example in mind, forgive me.

While I appreciate that very few people have the space, time, energy or obsessive personality to build a vegetable garden quite as daunting as mine, it is very easy and very rewarding to do something small. A couple of well-placed pots or a windowsill could allow you to turn dirt into food, with very little effort or cost. Quite apart from the satisfaction of eating something you killed yourself, the vegetables you get will taste better as they've not travelled and are fresh from the ground.

So, I've decided to write up some of the easiest and tastiest vegetables that I've accomplished, at the appropriate time of the year for my loyal reader(s) to try it themselves if they so wish.

Vegetable the first - potatoes

Five reasons to grow potatoes at home:
1) They taste better than any potato you will ever get from a supermarket or farmer's market
2) Potatoes are the easiest thing in the world to grow - they don't require a bed, fiddly little seeds or any knowledge whatsoever. All you have to do is put a little potato into some dirt, water it every now and again and from it will grow a plant that makes more potatoes.
3) They don't need much space, or sunlight, or anything. More sunlight is always better, but you can grow them anywhere.
4) You get a good return for not a huge outlay. Three bags, which take up approx 3ft² space will provide you with about 40 potatoes for an initial outlay of £20, but you can reuse the compost* and bags again next year (*compost may require a dose of inexpensive fertiliser next year). That means you'd just have to buy new seed potatoes, which would be about £2-£3 per year.
5)

Potatoes grow from other potatoes - if you've ever forgotten a bag in a kitchen cupboard and come back to spindly white tendrils, then you've accidentally a potato plant. It's best not to plant supermarket potatoes though, as they tend to be bred for eating and transport, not creating a new generation. You can get seed potatoes like these online, but you might find it cheaper (and more fun) to go down to a garden centre/Homebase and look through the varieties yourself. There are two main types: Earlies, planted from end of February and can be harvested from May onwards; and Maincrop, which are planted March and are harvested July/August onwards. Earlies are usually "new potato" types, while maincrops are bigger and more useful for chips, roasties, etc.

You often get seed potatoes delivered in January/February, as it's a good idea to chit them before you put them in the ground. Chitting just means leaving them in a cool, bright position, usually in an old egg box, so that they can get the light and start sprouting sprouts. It's not essential to do this step, but it will speed up your harvest.

People think of potatoes as being something grown in the earth and dug for, but the easiest way to grow them is in a bag on a patio or other hard surface.You can get a specially designed bag like this one for only £2.99 on Amazon, but you can also recycle an old compost bag if you have one/live anywhere near me and want to cadge one. I've got dozens going spare, so feel free. The only rules for the bag are that it has to have some holes in the bottom to drain water and that it has to be relatively opaque. Potatoes that see sunlight while they're in the ground are bad for you, so no clear tubs, bags or boxes.

All you need do is roll the edges of your bag down so that it's only about 1-2 ft high and pour in a thick layer of compost. Put in three seed potatoes on the compost, equidistant from one another and with the sprouting bits pointing up, and cover them up with another layer of compost. Water them twice a week or whenever the earth seems dry - a surprising amount of edible potato is water, so best to keep them too damp than too dry.

In time, you will end up with three bushy green plants poking up through the soil. When they are about 1.5ft high, roll up the edge of the bag so that it's now as tall/slightly taller than the plant and then pour more compost on top of the plants until all but the top few leaves are covered. Yes, this will feel like you're murdering the plant that you worked so hard to make happen. However, we're not interested in the green bit; we're interested in the potatoey-goodness of the roots and the deeper the dirt, the more room there is for spuds.

The plants will recover from the indignity of being earthed up and will valiantly create another 1.5ft of foliage again. Teach them that life is cruel, roll up the edges of the bag to make it deeper and pour more compost on, again leaving the top few leaves uncovered.

Rinse and repeat until the bag is fully unrolled and as tall as it can get and the compost is a few inches from the top. The potatoes will revel in their freedom and create a bushy top of green bits and sometimes flowers to celebrate. Ignore this; they're just showing off.

What you're waiting for is for the green bits to start dying. Yes, it's a plant that signals when it's done by going yellow and falling over - how great is that?! Once that happens, your potatoes are just about ready. You don't need to dig them up immediately - you can leave them in the bags for several months and it won't make the slightest difference to them. Some of mine last year stayed in the bags for 6 months without any effect.

All you need do is cut off and remove the dying greeny bits and dig through your compost, looking for spuds. It's quite a good idea to save the bag that the compost came in and then you can pour it back in bit by bit and remove the potatoes as you see them. As I mentioned earlier, everything can be reused next year with a little bit of extra fertiliser.

If anyone in and around Bath is interested in trying this, there is a good chance that I will have a couple of seed potatoes and some usable bags that will be open to good homes. Apply below if you want to give potatoes a try.

PJW