Home Grown Potato Salad
It’s mid-March already and time to get planting for home grown vegetables. Even if you don’t have a garden there are things you can grow on balconies, windowsills and even in containers outside the back door.
In my opinion, potatoes are the easiest thing to grow and now is an excellent time to plant them for early summer harvesting. Imagine serving up home-grown potato salad with your first barbecue of the summer!
Unearthing your potatoes when they are ready is better than Christmas – discovering nature’s gifts like jewels in the ground. If you are gardening with children they will particularly love this part, it’s like digging for treasure!
What you will need:
- seed potatoes
- containers filled with compost or grow bags(if you don’t have a garden with deep soil)
- water
Seed potatoes can be purchased from garden centres or similar shops. I have also grown potatoes by planting supermarket potatoes that have spouted by accident in the kitchen.
Some people chit their potatoes (that means leaving them on a sunny windowsill to sprout before planting them) over the late winter. I have tried both chitting and not chitting and have had nothing but success either way. I haven’t bothered this year after reading advice from Alys Fowler’s book (Amazon link).
Plant your seed potatoes around 15cm deep (don’t worry about being completely accurate) and about half a metre apart – you don’t want your potatoes competing for space underground as there will be less of them – cover over with soil/compost.
Keep your potatoes watered so that the soil is damp. When the first shoots appear cover with more soil, to increase your harvest (you can do this a few times, depending on how much space you have, or not at all if you’re growing in a container).
When the plant flops over, dig up your spuds, wash and eat – simple!
Potato Salad
My own recipe for potato came from a situation when I didn’t have the ingredients for a traditional potato salad and the quantities of all the ingredients can be tweaked to suit your own tastes, as can the herb(s) used.
The recipe works best with waxy or new potatoes, however it will work with any kind that is in season. I have listed dried herbs here but fresh will be tastier and swap and you can swap and change depending what you have available. The peas can be substituted for fresh ones or for spring onions or other season vegetables.
The potato salad goes very nicely with well cooked sausages and salad.
For enough for four people:
- 600g potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
- Large handful of frozen peas
- 4 tablespoons natural yoghurt
- 2 tablespoons free range mayonnaise
- 1 teaspoon mustard
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- Pinch of black pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
Wash and chop your potatoes (peel if they are larger main crop varieties), place into a saucepan of water and bring to the boil. When the water is boiling, add the frozen peas. Boil gently until the potatoes are soft but not falling apart. Drain and eave to cool.
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix the yoghurt and mustard together with a spoon until completely blended and stir in the other ingredients.
When the potatoes are cool, pour the dressing over them and mix carefully with a wooden spoon and serve.
Here are some useful links for a more in depth guide to growing potatoes in compost bags and containers.
Got the gardening bug? Perhaps you would like to try your hand at moon planting.
Photography: Home Baked Online and Chiot’s Run
I enjoyed using this site today, some great tips , especially growing your own vegetables. I love all forms of gardening and would enjoy any information about growing vegetabbles and flowers and shrubs.