Right, that’s it, I’m officially hacked off. They were watered, earthed up, cossetted… for God’s sake, I only stopped short of putting an After Eight on their pillow every night, and my Mimi potatoes are still a disaster. (Those, by the way, who are looking at the picture and thinking, what’s she complaining about, they fill half a bucket? should know that this is a toddler’s bucket, as illustrated by the helpful accompanying spade).
OK, so I didn’t feed them. And maybe they were in quite a shady spot. But the soil was manured last year and had compost added this and the whole point of Mimi potatoes is that they’re first earlies so supposed to be ready 10 weeks after planting and, come on, four whole plants growing away there for 94 whole days of my life – that’s even more time than you can be held in a British prison without charge – and I’m left with this? Please someone, tell me where I went wrong… I’m off to the beach to make a sand castle.
After my previous disasters with potatoes last year (they rotted or were eaten by slugs) I have this year bought some of those special black potato bags from one of the seed companies (I think thomson and morgan) designed to put one seed potato each into. So far had two of the four and there was just about enough from each seed potato to feed two of us as a side dish . Alright that’s not spectacular but I’m going to leave the other two bags a few more weeks cos there was some eeny weenie potatoes in my harvest that could have swelled some more. What’s more I could stick them ontop of an uncultivatable spot at the bottom of my hedge so no ground wasted either. Give it a go.