Donald - The Last Potato

In which we meet, greet and eat Donald

Well, the potato crop is not seeing us as far through the winter as I’d hoped – here we are in October and scrapping the bottom of the bag.

I got nearly half a sack (okay - a quarter) of potatoes from my initial investment of 11 tubers. There were additional costs, of course. I had to bribe Number 1 Son with £10 to dig over the potato patch, after I’d wrecked my shoulder trying. Then, when I caught him trying to subcontract the work to Number 2 Son for 50p, I spent another £2 employing Number 2 Son to shovel manure.

All the same, I feel I got a decent return.

Potatoes are funny things. They have to be ‘earthed up’ – the earth piled higher and higher around the plants as they grow - so that the tubers are not exposed to air. Otherwise, they turn green and are apparently toxic. This figures, as they are actually part of the nightshade family.

Which of course invites the question – Why did people persist in cultivating such obviously poisonous plants? And how many people died eating green potatoes before someone invented ‘earthing up’? It’s like the fact that rhubarb stalks are edible, but rhubarb leaves very definitely aren’t. How many hungry souls succumbed to rhubarb poisoning working that one out?

I earthed up like mad, and all my potatoes were snowy white. And (I might have mentioned this before – it’s had a big impact on my life) I won 3rd Prize for Whites at the local Horticultural Show (don’t ask how many entries there were… lets just say Under Four).

I found Donald whilst selecting my entries. Show potatoes have to be identical in size and shape. Donald was a clear one-off: an exact and perfect replica of a bathduck.

So we’ve kept him till the very last. And now he’s had his chips. Or rather we have. Ha ha.