Allotment tales: Expect to be tempted with a bewildering selection of varieties

Fifteen years ago Garden Organic held the first Potato Day at Ryton, near Coventry. This annual event is so popular now that they can expect thousands of visitors. Meanwhile, I discover there are at least six being held in Scotland between late February and early March this year.

The great excitement of a potato day is that you can expect to be tempted with a bewildering selection of varieties of seed potatoes from the well-known, such as Maris Piper, to the rare. There is no need to buy a sackful. The potatoes will be on sale individually. It's all too easy to get them muddled, so I recommend taking along a supply of small bags and a labelling pen.

Glancing at the names, I can see that Scotland has been at the vanguard of potato breeding for years. Lists of cultivars read like a Scottish gazetteer with names such as Edzell Blue dating from 1915, Pentland Javelin and Arran Pilot – Home Guard was the reliable stalwart of the Second World War.

Most potato days offer much more than just a wide choice of potatoes. There may be garlic, shallots and onion sets for sale too. Some potato days promise potato-themed refreshments.

More than once, my main-crop potatoes have been wrecked by potato blight and when it strikes there is very little you can do. Not only is it the scourge of potatoes, but it can put paid to a promising outdoor tomato crop at the same time. So I am definitely restricting my selection to the most blight-resistant ones. With luck there will be some experts to guide me.

Potatoes are not fast-food gardening but what they lack in speed they make up for in predictability. First earlies planted from late March to early April should be ready for the pot by midsummer. Second earlies and main crop will follow on.

I've been engrossed in a fascinating book about allotments by Twigs Way. She traces their origins back to the enclosure of common land and mass migration to towns. I was amused to read that in the 19th century it was thought that a man with a plot to grow potatoes was less likely to spend too much time in the pub. On the other hand, if he had too much land, digging his crop would exhaust him before he got to work.

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 12 February, 2011