Sarah Raven's Kitchen and Garden

***click here to see your choice of seed potatoes all sent with full planting and chitting instructions***

Every year in February the question – chit or not chit - raises its head. At Berryfields – the Gardeners’ World garden - I did a trial with them to work out whether it was worth bothering with the extra palaver of chitting, spouting the potato for a few weeks in a cool light place, or whether you could just shove your potatoes straight into the ground. The chitted potatoes in all cases – Earlies and Maincrops - gave a larger crop, but as Alys Fowler – the off screen head gardener at Berryfields pointed out, the non-chitted were in many ways a better size. The chitted ones grew very large and had to be chopped to be cooked, where as the non-chitted were the perfect salad, new potato size. If time is rolling on, go for the easy option and put them straight in.

I don’t think it’s worth growing most of your Maincrop potatoes. You can buy good organic ones easily now and on the whole, commercial growers store them better than you can, stashed away in the corner at home. Lots of mine end up rotting or spouting and I have to chuck many of them away.

There are however, four varieties I always grow. My first Early must-have is ‘International Kidney’ – the Jersey Royal. It has excellent flavour and the sort of waxy potato texture I like and its yield is good. It hasn’t done well in the late frosts and wet summers we’ve had for the last couple of years, but this year, let’s hope for better.

Another stalwart Early, all-rounder, which you’d be mad not to go for is ‘Charlotte’ . It’s hard to fault this old potato variety and I regretted not having at least a short line of this to eat straight from the garden last year. I also find it hard to resist the late Maincrop‘Pink Fir Apple’ . Its lateness makes it particularly prone to blight. It’s superb some years – storing right through the winter - and a wipe out in others.

In our potato trial,‘Belle de Fontenay’ , came out top in terms of taste and it has a lovely smooth, firm, waxy texture, with a good yield, but it was sadly one of the worst varieties for slug damage in the whole trial, so last year we tried a different growing technique. With some willow edge panels 45cm high, we created a raised bed on our already raised beds in the ‘Belle de Fontenay’ section of the garden. We dug over the soil and integrated the usual manure and then on top of the soil surface, added a layer of about 10cm of compost. The seed potatoes were pushed lightly into that, and then the large scale baskets backfilled with a mix of one quarter home-made compost, one quarter grit with the rest top soil.

This extra bed height and drainage had a miraculous effect on the slugs and the potatoes emerged perfect and pristine without a spot of scab or slug mark on them. Harvesting them was also a joy. Like a tombola, you could just dig in with your hands and pull out your supper, without the normal anxiety of pronging the best on the tithes of your fork.

Having had such a success with potatoes grown in their glorified basket, we thought we’d try the same double raised system with carrots – the other root crop you’ll always have problems with on a heavy soil. My family eat carrots – particularly raw - by the barrow load and so every year I try to grow more and more at home, but usually they’re not a great success.

From late June onwards, post our potato triumph, we sowed our carrots into gutters and then transplanted them into a double raised bed. As belt and braces against carrot root fly, the carrot seed was inter-sown in the gutters with the red spring onion North Holland Red Mate, and just like Belle de Fontenay, they were a huge success. For our first sowing we chose the delicious early carrot ‘Amini’, and then in July moved on to several sowings of the best ever Maincrop ‘Sytan’. We like eating our carrots young and sweet and so as soon as they reach finger size, we start to pull them, taking enough at a time for just that meal. Harvested like that, you get the sweetest flavour and the best texture. Both varieties grew well – which they don’t always on my soil – and emerged from the ground immaculate, tasty, smooth and clean skinned roots, without any sign of slug or carrot root fly.

If you garden on heavy soil, the giant raised basket is the way to go for slug prone roots. Give it a try.
 

French beans with new potatoes

This is one of my favourite ways of eating just dug ‘International Kidney’ or ‘Belle de Fontenay’ waxy new potatoes. The squeaky texture of fresh French beans is brilliant with new potatoes. You can toss them both in a little truffle oil and add a few rocket leaves, or serve them like this with nut oil, toasted almonds and lots of dill.
 

• For 4
• 450g new potatoes
• 450g French beans
• 2 tablespoons dill, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 230ml sour cream
• 1 teaspoon caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon hazelnut oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• Toasted flaked or halved almonds

Cook the new potatoes in boiling salted water adding the beans for the last 4 minutes of the cooking time (the beans must be crisp).

Drain the beans and potatoes. Plunge the beans in cold water and pour over the oil while still warm. Slice the potatoes to allow the dressing to penetrate.

Combine the chopped dill and garlic with the sour cream, sugar and seasoning and carefully fold into the potatoes and beans.

Sprinkle over the almonds.