Wild Hope Homestead

I have been so busy with all the backyard renovations that I almost forgot about buying seed potatoes. That was one of the reasons The Little Fulla and I high-tailed it to Bunnings last Saturday. They usually have a good range of varieties in both 1kg and 3kg bags. I was after Agria and something else, quite potentially Ilam Hardy. Well, they did not have a lot left. Oh no! It was like the garlic all over again! I thought I better just get something even though I didn’t know much about the few varieties they had left, so I got a 1kg bag of Rocket potatoes, an early, quick-maturing and easy-to-grow variety that is well-suited for containers. These I will grow in the black compost bin.

Bunnings didn’t have chicken wire either (unless you count 2m rolls as useful) so I decided to rush off to Mitre 10 Mega as The Little Fulla started to get tired. Their stash of seed potatoes wasn’t exactly in an obvious place but once I found them I had hit the jackpot. They only had 1.5kg bags but they had Agria, Ilam Hardy and a number of others. I had to make a quick decision before The Little Fulla a) got too tired and b) toppled the pile of potato bags onto the floor. One bag of Agria and one bag of Ilam Hardy.

Afterwards I realised I was going to have rather a lot of potatoes. I set them out in egg cartons to chit in the garage. And I counted them. Rocket: 9 potatoes. Agria: 17 potatoes. Ilam Hardy: 21 potatoes. Erm… 47 seed potatoes. What was I thinking?! I got thrown by the 1.5kg size, which I’m not used to. And I really wanted to try Ilam Hardy. And The Little Fulla distracted me. Last year I planted 19 seed potatoes. Of those, one failed and the Jersey Benne didn’t produce well but the Agria were good producers, despite my lack of mounding, however, they only got us through half a year. So I obviously needed to plant more anyway, especially considering we are a family of three potato eaters now, but maybe not quite that many. It’s just as well we’re building new vege beds! Ok, I really need to make a spreadsheet now…

The potatoes are chitting in their egg trays. So many potatoes…

‘Rocket’ potatoes.

To the eye there is a difference in quality of the seed potatoes. The ‘Rocket’ potatoes, here, are smooth and look top-notch.

The ‘Agria’ and ‘Ilam Hardy’ potatoes from a different brand are more rough-looking and some of the growths, which I pulled off, were a tad mouldy. Time will tell how they compare.