March 22, 2025

Potatoes

Apparently, the potato came to Europe in the 16th century from South America. It was once a food only eaten by the wealthy, but is now is a common staple in many households. I don’t have a lot of room to grow potatoes but still grow as many as I can. They have a bad reputation for being fattening, but they are not. It is the method of cooking that can make them fattening, eg making roasties, mashed with butter, or chips. A way to lower the impact on your blood sugar is to cook them the day before, keep them in the fridge over night. and then use. I do this with mashed potato or boiled potatoes.

Nutritional value

Potatoes are a useful source of vitamin C, they are full of fibre and starch and a great source of potassium. The vitamin C content does drop as soon as they are harvested. That is why I like to grow mine in tubs throughout the year (in the greenhouse during the cold weather and frosts) so that I get fresh potatoes for more most of the year. Boiling them loses the most vitamin C as it is leached into the water, and baking them retains the most. A fun fact to know is that 35g of home made potato crisps, although seen as snack junk food, actually contain a quarter of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C. We tend to air fry ours so that they need minimal oil.

Potatoes can be poisonous

I often see green potatoes at our food waste project and call them out as they are poisonous. Sprouted potatoes also contain alkaloids that if a lot are eaten, can make you ill. Potatoes with just a few areas of green on them can cause drowsiness or migraines, even if just eaten in small amounts.

Growing potatoes

There are lots of different varieties of potatoes, but I have to search to find much variety. This year I am trying 11 different kinds as I found an independent garden centre which sold the seed potatoes individually. I chit my potatoes to encourage the tubas. I usually stand them in an egg tray in my conservatory or green house. If potatoes are planted early they need to be protected from the frost. I plant 2 potatoes in a builder’s bucket of soil and start them in February in the greenhouse.. If grown in the soil my first earlies are planted about a foot apart in late March or early April. I then mound them up with soil as the greenery emerges. In the buckets I usually fill the bucket until it is half full and then fill it up to the top as the tubers grow.

Potatoes like to be watered in dry weather. My first earlies are usually ready in June as they take about 10 to 12 weeks to grow. I tend to plant some every 2 or 3 weeks until the end of September so that I have a constant source of fresh potatoes. In October I put the buckets into the green house to protect them. I then get potatoes up until just after Christmas. I often find stray ones in February and March which make a nice surprise.

Storing potatoes

Frost ruins potatoes and makes them go black and so I store all of mine in a cool porch inside. If the storage place is too warm it will encourage shoots. I do not wash them, and I let them dry in the sun for a few hours before storing them. They are usually stored in cardboard boxes or brown paper sacks. I check them every couple of weeks to make sure that none of them have gone bad, or are starting to grow shoots.

Cooking potatoes

Apparently there are over 500 ways to serve potatoes and so, even though they may seem boring, they can be used in lots of different meals. Personally I love a fluffy baked potato or chips, but there are lots of other ways that we use potatoes. I used mashed potatoes to make fish cakes and potato pancakes, roast them in the air fryer, make a cottage pie, and use crisp potatoes in between chilli to make nachos. They are also a filling ingredient to put in soups, and make a lovely salad when cold. These are just some examples. Potatoes are great to bulk out food and fill empty tummies. They used to be quite cheap but have doubled in price over the last few years. There are lots of recipes on this site that use potatoes. Here are a few.