The Spuds that keep on giving...

Remember this sack of potatoes that I was so excited about? Organic Rooster potatoes for a complete steal of a price? Well, despite our potato-loving ways we at Skint Vegan Towers didn't manage to get through them all before the inevitable happened and they sprouted and started looking a little green around the gills. Too many other grains and pasta to choose from to accompany our evening meals you see! I left them in the sack in the kitchen, ignored and unloved while I wondered what to do with them. The next time I ventured in, the contents of the sack looked like an explosion in a string factory - roots begetting roots, organic matter everywhere. I happened to look at Melanie's blog and spotted a post about growing spuds in a compost sack. So I figured why not put my over-excited, self-chitted potatoes out into the garden, snip a few holes in the base of the paper sack with a pair of scissors and throw some compost over them. If the worst came to the worst, I'd have wasted my time on half a dozen potatoes I'd have composted anyway. If they did what they were supposed to - Wahey! Sure enough, within a couple of weeks I had shoots poking through the compost. So, I kept throwing more compost on top of them, watering them intermittently - very-lazy-gardener style. Before I knew it, the base of my sack had exploded and I had lush green foilage everywhere. A few weeks later, my sack was full - I couldn't have added anymore compost to it if I tried. Then yesterday, while cleaning out the garden sheds - I locate my potato bag between both sheds, next to the incredibly heavy block of standard compost we have in our garden for ease of upkeep - Skint Vegan Dad manouvered an awkward item out backwards and promptly walked into Spud Central, tipping it over completely. I was waiting for my gorgeous green leaves to flower and die down before I picked my potatoes but my initial annoyance turned to amazement when, enlisting Ho-Tep's help, I realised there were loads and loads of potatoes. I mean, loads. I weighed my haul on the bathroom scales when I brought them back into the house - 3 kg.

Not bad at all. And they're all nice - no blight, no worm or snail holes, despite the vast eco-system that their growing environment had apparently been supporting. 'Imagine how many we could have ended up with had this unfortunate accident not led us to harvest them early?' I thought to myself. This experiment in lazy gardening has renewed my interest in growing more food in our garden. Some of the potatoes we picked are far too small to eat, so I think I'm going to try and chit these again and start the whole process over, maybe using a rubblesack this time. It may work, it may not, I don't know if it's possible to grow potatoes so late on in the year (In time for Christmas? No?) so I'd appreciate any advice from you keen green gardeners out there!

In the meantime - I'm off to mash some floury red spuds with lots of margarine, soya milk, cornish sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.