Last night we harvested the first of our maori potatoes. I've always wanted to grow my own maori potatoes and I was lucky enough to get a good supply of potato seeds from a great whanau friend from Ngaruawahia who gave me a couple of different varieties.
I planted them in early November over a 4 week period in a combination of my raised vegetable garden beds and a portable potato bag - the second idea was based on watching Annabel Langbein doing her piece on her TV programme. I planted over a 4 week period to stagger harvesting time to ensure we had a good supply from the easter period onwards. We just had to decide when was the right time to test the first harvest.
Yesterday we were presented with the perfect opportunity. My husband decided to burn off the results of trimming a few trees from around the Ponderosa, then came up with the idea of cooking our dinner over the fire. Just quietly, he's been wanting to do that for a while. Venison stew was on the menu using only things from our vegetable garden or in the cupboard so up came the potatoes, carrots, spring onions then bay leaves, tomatoes, rosemary, homemade herbed salt (which I will blog about soon), garlic, lots of cracked pepper, brown onions and two good bottles of red wine. One to go in the pot and the other to drink while sitting by the fire watching the magic happen.
It just so happened my sister came over to help me drink the bottle of wine and enjoyed the experience of sitting by the fire and watching our dinner unfold.
The potatoes weren't as big as I thought they would be, but they were delicious none the less. Our harvest didn't even dent the side of whats still in our garden and I'm really happy with this.
If I'm to plan for the next lot of maori potato planting, I definitely need a different and bigger area to plant as they are one of those crops that need space in order to multiply and do their thing.
Happy living peeps!
No comments:
Post a Comment