Sprouting In Your Kitchen Cupboard... (Potatoes)

Member Name: shewhoguards

Product:	Potatoes
Date:	23/05/08 (404 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No need to waste sprouting potatoes, easy to grow, you can eat them afterwards.

Disadvantages: Need room (but you can use a container)

I have a strange bit of guilt concerning potatoes and onions. While I have no problem eating them when fresh, or throwing them away when mouldy, I can't do anything but plant them once they've started sprouting or I feel like a murderer. This, combined with forgetting about a bag of pickling onions, is why I now have a small row of totally useless sprouting onions in my back garden. The potatoes, thankfully, are a bit more useful.

If you're planting proper seed potatoes, you're not meant to plant the-one-you-had-in-your-kitchen-cupboard along with them. This is because they may come from abroad and might carry Strange Diseases. If you weren't actually intending to grow potatoes and just have a sprouting one to get rid of, this is not a problem though. Even if you DO have seed potatoes, it's pretty easy to get around - potatoes will grow in pretty much anything! Currently I have mine in a massive great bucket-thing left behind in my shed by my house's last owner, but my aunt informs me that if you have nothing else, a bin bag filled with compost will do just fine.

They're not hard to grow either. Find your sprouting potato, stick it in a hole an inch or two down, water with the rest of your garden and within a couple of weeks green leaves appear. Meanwhile the roots will be growing too, delving down deep (they do need a bit of room so if you plant them in a more general vegetable garden don't cramp them up with the other stuff too much). The green will keep growing, and finally get little white flowers on. When they blossom, it's time to pull up your potatoes.

Voila, free potatoes! And very welcome they will be with food getting so expensive too.

Now, I just need to work out what to do with the onions...

Summary: A nice way to get free potatoes