POTS OF SPUDS BUT NOT ENOUGH SPACE TO GROW

By Richard Wright - Friday, May 16, 2008

Golden harvest. Richard Wright with the new crop of Jersey Royal potatoes.

GARDENING
FROM tomatoes, my daughter Roseanna’s favourite, to potatoes — my passion.
For a while, I’ve asked myself the question whether Jersey Royals taste the same as they used to? Other people have similarly questioned them too.
The taste of the red earth of Jersey used to be one of the year’s seasonal highlights. The International Kidney from the Channel Isles, followed each spring by Cornish.
This year Jersey Royals were here in record time.
Marks and Sparks had limited numbers on their shelves as early as February 12, a feat made possible by growing them under polythene.
Thereby is probably a partial answer to why the taste appears to have diluted.
Jersey only has a land area of 116 square kilometres and every available square centimetre is farmed.
Agriculture is right up there with tourism as the island’s second biggest earner, beaten only by that other cash crop — financial services.
Potatoes are crammed in there with cauliflower, tomatoes and flowers and milk from that other standard bearer of the Jersey name, the dairy cow.
The result of that is year on year potatoes are planted on the same acres, meaning ever more measures have to be taken to control disease.
Producers in Jersey take massive measures to ensure quality, even employing a small army of WI members to carry out routine taste tests, compiling the results, taken under controlled conditions, against other varieties.
They compare the taste of Jerseys from different growing conditions such as soil types and they factor in the use of plastic and fertilisers.
After picking they’re processed within the hour and go into rapid air chillers to preserve taste and increase shelf life.
That’s an awful lot of faffing about for the humble spud but it’s not surprising when you look at its importance to Jersey’s economy.
Of all the potatoes that are grown in Jersey — an average of 45,000 tonnes a year — 99 per cent are exported to mainland Britain, worth a cool £28 million and, as we all know, there is huge pressure to get them in the shops early.
The story of the Jersey Royal potato began in 1880, when Hugh de la Hayes invited some friends for supper. After the meal he showed them a curiosity: a huge potato with 15 ‘eyes’ in it, just waiting for new growth to sprout.
The farmers cut it into pieces and decided to plant the bits on a steeply sloping field, above Bellozanne Valley on the island. And they waited.
The following spring the chunks of broken-up potato produced a large and early crop. For the most part it was unremarkable, but, so folklore goes, among the traditional round potatoes was one peculiar plant.
Although the parent potatoes and most of the new crop were round, this plant had produced nothing but kidney-shaped potatoes. Inter-national Kidney was born but it was then named Jersey Royal Fluke.
The spuds may have been small and peculiar in shape but they had a fantastic flavour and paper-thin skin, in which most of the flavour is trapped.
Now, more than 120 years have passed and the Jersey is the king of the crop. It is still grown mostly on Jersey soil but is now available to gardeners elsewhere too.
The potato now accounts for almost half of Jersey’s agricultural income, being grown on more than 8,600 acres and the care taken to preserve it means it has the same EU ‘product designation of origin’ that protects Champagne.
Down in Godshill the scale of the operation is a little different.
There aren’t enough spring hours in the day for the Illman family busily sowing, pricking-out, planting, cursing pests and harvesting their crop of early Godshill Organic potatoes.
Not as ludicrously early as Jersey Royals but hitting the market when prices are high, Ruth Illman put her crop under polytunnel cover and they and the spring lamb await me in the fridge.
I’ll let you know if they pass the taste test and surpass Jersey’s finest.
I’m having a go, too, on my allotment with International Kidney.
Jersey Royals are among four early varieties in my seaweeded soil, where I’m doing my little best to re-create conditions similar to the Channel isle of my conception.
Perhaps, though, potatoes have gone the way of summers, which were, of course, undeniably longer and sunnier when I was younger.

MORE OF A HIKE THAN A TRIKE TO VEG PATCH NOW
IT was a real treat to be able to give landscape gardener Sean Collins a surprise in my column, through his wife, Yasmin, seizing the opportunity to tell him how much she loved him as he hit the big four-oh.
In a thank-you card after the event, she said: “It was really great. He was blown over with shock and you made both mums cry!”
But the next bit of the card gave me a bit of a surprise too.
“Incidentally, my mum and aunt said they remember you as a child. You lived up the road from them in Ryde (West Street).
They used to walk you up to your vegetable patch.
My mum is Angela Kimouski, but was then a Dimmick, and my aunt Gaye Dimmick. They had brothers, Colin and Terry. Ring any bells?”
Certainly does.
Colin, of course, was best known for having the White Hart at Havenstreet that we used to visit on our weekly lads’ night out.
I remember Angela and Gaye very fondly.
Not only did they help me on my way along a path to a veg patch hobby that never ceases to delight 50 years on but they also used to supervise me as I pedalled my way around the pavements of West Street and Ratcliffe Avenue on my beloved blue and white tricycle.

LIMBER UP FOR WALK WITH GARDEN VISIT
IF you fancy limbering up for Walk the Wight, there’s a great garden open tomorrow (Saturday) just up the road from Ventnor Botanic Garden.
The Botanic Garden Friends’ Society has been invited to visit St Andrew’s Hotel in Belgrave Road from 10.30 a.m. until noon.
While it is an invitation to the friends’ anyone is welcome (except if you want to bring a dog) and coffee/tea and biscuits are included in the entry fee of £2.50.
There will be plant and cake stalls as well as a raffle.
This garden is full of rare and unusual plants including a wide variety of echiums and irises.
The garden is very steep and could be difficult for the not so spry who could still find much of interest on the upper part which, in addition to a large variety of plants, has many little wall lizards scampering around.
The paved terrace and conservatory have a wonderful view over the garden to the sea and provide shelter if necessary.
There is roadside parking in Park Avenue and a public car park by the church. Disabled visitors may be set down by St Andrew’s.

POTS OF SPUDS BUT NOT ENOUGH SPACE TO GROW

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