On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:54:21 +0100, Sacha wrote:

I remember one very wet year when some growers in St Martin, on côtils
not far from Gorey Castle, planted their spuds twice. The first
planting just got washed straight down the hill and onto the road. That
was a really late year for Royals. A farmer friend always used to bring
me a box full of chats - the really tiny, marble-sized potatoes. I just
washed the earth off them and roasted them whole in olive oil and
scattered with sea salt. Wonderful! So your crop might not be a
disaster if you treat them the same way.

Royals were the first thing I put in to the new lotty and that was at
Easter as it wasn't handed over til then. I put them into unprepared
earth with a bulb planter and then heaped vraic on them and hoped for the
best. My neighbours went down the digging-over, earthing up, a Jersey
foot apart route and theirs overtook mine very quickly and were harvested
at least a month ago. I was too busy trying to establish some permanent
beds (rhubarb and asparagus) to spend much time on potatoes. What few
we've dug have been delicious, though. Planning to put some 'earlies' in
this back-end