What a fantastic day to start my spud blog - perfect spring weather.








I'm intending to record my potato-growing activities here for my own records (although I expect I will drift into other areas as the whim takes me).

I've never attempted to grow spuds before, so it may all go horribly wrong.



Last week I bought a bag of seed potatoes at £3.99 for 2.5kgs, which is way more than I need, but there were no smaller bags. The book and web advice is that seed potatoes are disease-resistant, unlike those that you buy to eat. I wanted to grow Charlotte potatoes, but they didn't have that variety among the seed potatoes at my local garden centre, so I chose Pentland Javelin (I have no idea what they taste like). However, when I was in Somerfield last Friday I saw a bag of Charlottes, so I bought them and am now 'chitting' a few of them - that's the process of leaving them in the light so that they sprout.





I'm intending to plant the Charlottes in refuse sacks, using compost which I bought (all will hopefully become clear later), so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that using commercial compost will mean they're not as likely to be exposed to disease as those planted in the soil - time will tell whether that's true.







Exciting, innit?