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I'm a big fan of home-grown potatoes. They're top for taste, texture and our carbon footprint. So they're a crop I'd recommend anyone to grow, and if you're going to do it, you may as well get as early a crop as possible.When I did my MSc in 'Crop

It was definitely NOT the best year to choose to grow large numbers of sweet potatoes, but yes, it was the year that I did so! I adore that ridiculously toffee-like taste and texture of roasted sweet potatoes. Perfection, an apricot

. If you have light, free-draining soil, you can start planting potatoes outside. I have very heavy clay soil in my garden, which is still a bit too wet for potatoes, so I’m putting it off for a little longer.I’ll sow some hardy annual flower seeds outside

's more, this year I had to dispose of up to four diseased tubers per net. Next year I'll be more organised and buy them from the seed catalogues. I would also advise any first-time potato growers to ignore the growing instructions on some potato bags

The first of the snowdrops are up, my daffodils are romping away - I can almost believe that spring will actually arrive. But it's the seed potatoes that are really firing me up.I can't resist buying seed potatoes, and have bought three batches

Potato blight, Phytophthora infestans, determines the quality and quantity of our potato harvest. We grow our own spuds every year, but harvest them in varying quantities, depending on whether or not they've been affected.The fungal infection

Here we are in early July and I have a horrible feeling that potato blight is just around the corner. The weather has been perfect for this horrible fungal infection to wreak havoc on everyone's home-grown spuds. By the look of the weather right now

then the air was positively dripping. So, I'm amazed at just how little blight I've seen on tomatoes or potatoes.There was some blight on a few of the potato varieties I've been growing this year, but even then the brown patches on the leaves remained as tight

hand would one day grow into a whole bulb of garlic they were dumbstruck! And we're all very excited about harvesting lots of potatoes from the single seed potato we planted.For so many kids you can see a whole new story start to unravel, and the great

Aaargh! Blight has struck my spuds! And I bet it's appearing in gardens everywhere too.I'd been rather proud of the fact that, despite it having hit a friend's plot the other side of the village a week ago, my potatoes (including the varieties I