We bought some seed potatoes a couple of months ago and they’ve been happily sprouting (AKA chitting) in the back room by the window. As we mention every year, the late great Joe Maiden used to say that Good Friday was traditionally the day to put your seed potatoes in. What with Easter falling early some years it may be better hanging on a couple of weeks when the risk of frost has disappeared but as usual we’re contradicting ourselves.

We’ve grown spuds for a few years but we’re so fed up of scratching about under the surface of the plant looking for early potatoes, leaving a few in when we’ve harvested it and having a few “volunteer” plants grow the next season combined with general impatience we decided we may change the way we grow spuds. We also saw Monty Don on the telly the other week chatting about growing spuds in buckets and tubs so a “lightbulb” moment occured.

This morning we simply stuck a seed potato in a small bucket which was half full with some general purpose peat free compost freshly aquired from Lewisham Lidl. We buried the spud about an inch deep and stuck an old plastic mini cloche over the top. As soon as the shoots come to the surface we’ll put an inch worth of compost over the top and will repeat the process until we’ve filled the bucket. This way at the end of the growing season we will just knock the whole plant out of the bucket with all of the spuds intact. No fuss, no bother. If only life was that simple.