I love potatoes and I always grow floury ones, not the waxy ones they grow here on my allotment site. Floury potatoes have a better taste; they make wonderful roast potatoes and chips, and they soak up butter. You have to know how to cook them, though: peel them before you boil them and they fall apart. When I was growing up in Ireland, we used to have something called tatties and dab-at-steel. Everyone had a glass of buttermilk and there was a plate of salt in the middle of the table. My mother stood at the table and peeled the cooked potatoes, handed them out, then we dipped them in a dish of salt and drank the buttermilk. The Irish can make a whole meal out of a potato.
This is the first year I’ve got hold of some ‘Kerr’s Pink’ since I moved here. They’re known as kerpinks in Ireland and were the potatoes everybody grew there; they’ve a beautiful flavour. I’ll harvest them in late summer.
Brassicas grow well in this heavy Bristol soil, and that’s lucky because they are my favourite crops: cauliflowers, kale, brussels sprouts. The clay anchors their roots so they don’t wave around in the wind. I once owned a farm and nursery in the west of Ireland where we grew sitka spruce plants for the forestry industry. I thought that nowhere on earth had such heavy, tough soil, but then I moved here.
I come here most days, first thing in the morning, and I stay for about three hours. It’s peaceful and quiet, and I can hear the birds sing. I love to eat and I love to cook, and I cook every day from scratch. You wait and hope for crops to come but you can get sick of them, too. I never would have guessed I could get tired of eating purple-sprouting broccoli.
I leave plenty of space for flowers. I grow lupins and bearded irises. I love the bearded irises; I like to paint them. Men don’t think that’s quite right – they think an allotment is only for vegetables – but I say you’ve got to feed the soul, too.
My favourite spot
The polytunnel is a place I can always be, even if it’s raining. I put the frame up with a friend but, to be honest, he got in the way, so I thought, “I’ll put the cover on it myself.” That’s why it flaps about so much. I love the polytunnel because I can start things early – I’ll generally get sowing in February. I always lose a few packets of seed each year because I’m too keen and start too early.
- How does your garden grow? Email space@theguardian.com
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