One Potato, Two Potato,...

So many potatoes to choose from...

We opted for a few different varieties and bought 24 tubers in total:

• Annabelle - First Early
• Kestrel - Second Early
• Athlete - Second Early
• Orla - Early Maincrop
• Chopin - Early Maincrop
• Salad Blue - Maincrop

They only had big bags of Anya, so we didn't bother with them. It's so much better being able to buy the individual tubers.
I'm very pleased with my choice of Salad Blue. I'm looking forward to blue baked potatoes!! I hope they're as successful as our Purple Congo were in 2011, which produced some amazing purple mash.

We're mostly going to be growing in bags this year, hopefully to avoid some slug damage... Hmm, we'll see..
Charlton Park Garden Centre has a good setup, with information to hand and catalogues from the Potato Days they attend at Whitchurch

There they are, all ready to start chitting under their grow lamp in the cool hallway. And a photo opportunity to show off my green fingers (Joanne!)

Oh, and I bought the garlic. I got 1 bulb of Solent Wight (softneck) and 3 bulbs of French garlic Favor (hardneck) - I doubt I'll plant all of those. We didn't eat half of last years cloves, though this year I really do intend to pickle or store some in oil...

Now That's a Turnip!

I have recently heard at least three people say they get confused between parsnips and turnips. I have a solution, this book cover can now be in your mind's eye whenever a turnip (or parsnip) is mentioned!

An enormous parsnip would be more difficult to pull, even for the whole family :-)

Forgive the unusual post, but it came to mind after reading this Brown Envelope Seeds blogpost today. I've been inside most of the day reading blogs and sorting out our seeds for this year. We have a few more to buy. Hopefully we'll get our seed potatoes bought from Charlton Park Garden Centre in Wantage this week. They do a large selection of varieties and it's possible to buy individual tubers rather than huge bagfuls. It does mean the potatoes will be chitting for a long time, but it should mean we get the varieties we actually want!