It’s official, the national newspapers tell us what farmers up and down the country already knew – “Record low UK potato harvest… after an autumn of heavy rain… crops of broccoli and cauliflower have also been hit by poor weather.”
This years potatoes have been highly praised by members, visitors and Tans café (Hexham), Ian tells us that in part it is to do with the amount of rain we have had, but that was before the deluges and solid icy ground put paid to harvesting the remaining crop. This picture was taken one non-harvesting friday.
Mud on our crops is a good thing, helps with storage, prevents potatoes going green (no need for plastic). But too much mud as result of heavy rain means we can’t get on to the fields without damaging the soil – or getting stuck!
On our fields at Matfen, we planted 24 x 50 metre rows of potatoes. 7 of those rows are left in the ground, and at 3 kg a metre we are probably losing @1 tonne.
It is good to know we are not alone… will next year be better… will we get a full crop out of the ground? It will for certain be – different!
Whilst we were thinking about our potato harvest we decided to poll out members on their favourite way to eat potatoes – we only gave basic options – a quarter of the membership responded – here’s what we found.
And some good news. Since writing about our ‘lost’ crop, the ground dried just enough to try again, another batch (75 kg) were lifted and the potatoes were in much better condition than imagined… just in time for our Christmas/New Year share – good news indeed!
