Day 6: A local record-breaker

The heaviest potato

Peter Glazebrook grew the heaviest potato weighs 4.99 kg recorded on 4th September 2011 and was grown in his garden near Newark in Nottinghamshire.

The keen vegetable grower said his passion for "monsters" came from trying to win prizes at his local garden show in Southwell.

The gardener does not just grow huge potatoes but all sorts of big vegetables in his back garden.

He has held ten world records including the heaviest parsnip and the longest beetroot.

Today’s variety - Colleen (1st early)

Colleen is an Irish variety and the seed potatoes are very high yielding.

Great uniform tuber shape making them ideal boiled potatoes.

Short oval shape with yellow skin and creamy yellow flesh and shallow eyes.

Day 5 - Mr Potato Head

The Potato in popular culture - Mr Potato Head

Mr Potato Head is an American toy consisting of a plastic model of a potato which can be decorated with a variety of plastic parts that can attach to the main body.

These parts usually include ears, eyes, shoes, a hat, a nose and a mouth.

The toy was invented and developed by George Lerner in 1949 and first manufactured and distributed by Hasbro in 1952.

Originally conceived and designed as plastic pieces to be inserted into a real potato, complaints about mouldy vegetables soon led to the inclusion of a plastic potato body.

The toys tv advertising campaign was the first to be aimed directly at children; before this, commercials were only targeted at adults, so toy advertisements had always been pitched to parents.

This tv commercial campaign revolutionised marketing and caused an industrial boom.

Over one million kits were sold in the first year.

In 1953, Mrs Potato Head was added, and soon after, Brother Spud and Sister Yam completed the Potato Head family with accessories reflecting the affluence of the 1950s that included a car, a boat trailer, a kitchen set, a stroller, and pets called Spud-ettes.

Today’s variety - Charlotte (2nd Early)

A very popular second early salad variety.

Produces pear-shaped, shallow eyed, yellow-skinned, waxy tubers.

Creamy yellow flesh of first-class flavour, eaten either hot or cold.

Potato 'Charlotte' holds an RHS AGM and is frequently found in the supermarket.

DUE TO THE RECENT LOCKDOWN ANNOUNCEMENT..

We are still definitely planning to bring potato day to you in some manner!

We have placed the order for the potatoes!

When we have them delivered and how we will get them to you will be planned soon!"

Day 4 - The Potato Eaters

The Potato in Fine Art

The Potato Eaters is an oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) painted in 1885 in the Netherlands.

Van Gogh saw the Potato Eaters as a showpiece, for which he deliberately chose a difficult composition to prove he was on his way to becoming a good figure painter.

Van Gogh said he wanted to depict peasants as they really were.

He deliberately chose coarse and ugly models, thinking that they would be natural and unspoiled in his finished work.

The painting had to depict the harsh reality of country life, so he gave the peasants coarse faces and bony, working hands.

He painted the five figures in earth colours – ‘something like the colour of a really dusty potato, unpeeled of course’.

The message of the painting was more important to Van Gogh than correct anatomy or technical perfection.

He was very pleased with the result: yet his painting drew considerable criticism because its colours were so dark and the figures full of mistakes.

Nowadays, the Potato Eaters is one of Van Gogh’s most famous works.

Today’s variety - Cara (Maincrop)

Cara seed potatoes are one of the most popular maincrop varieties due to their excellent resistance to blight and high yield.

The tubers are round with beautiful white and pink white skin and pink eyes.

A robust seed potato variety with excellent drought resistance and good all round disease resistance.

Cara has soft, floury white flesh, therefore is good for baking and chipping.

Cara (main crop)

Day 3 - Potato Pete

Potato Pete - Victory in the Kitchen - A WW2 Cartoon Character.

Britain’s Ministry of Information generated material to influence the population towards the support of the war effort during World War Two (1939-1945).

A wide range of media was employed aimed at local and overseas audiences.

Traditional forms such as newspapers and posters were joined by new media including cinema (film), newsreels and radio.

‘Potato Pete’ became one of the most popular characters in Britains ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign and together with Doctor Carrot helped WW2 food campaigning.

The ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign was dreamt up to support that effort, with green spaces across Britain turned into vegetable patches.

Food was ‘ammunition of war’ and with imports hit hard by the attacks on shipping convoys, home-grown food became of crucial importance.

The potato was a pillar of the UK’s war effort. This is because it was easy to grow, breaking the reliance on food imports, it’s versatile, and it’s one of the most efficient crops in terms of land use.

They had to work out how to sell potatoes to the public and hence came Potato Pete and his recipe book.

Both Potato Pete and Doctor Carrot had their own song to further convey their message, sung by Betty Driver.

Radio broadcasts encouraged the nation that growing your own food was a form of recreation, not wartime sacrifice.

Betty Driver would continue her fame with a 42-year acting role behind the bar in the Rovers Return in Coronation street as Betty Williams.

Today’s variety - Blaue Annelise (Maincrop)

Available soon from our online shop.

Blaue Annelise is a fairly recent blue/purple-fleshed coloured introduction (2007) from Germany which gives long-oval tubers with deep blue flesh and skin.

A mild slightly creamy flavour and a nutty aroma.

The tubers are elongated with sunken eyes they are thick-skinned, and thus keep well.

Cooking qualities: Tasty & fluffy with a creamy flavour and nutty aroma.

Salad, roast, blue mash.

Day 2 - Space Potatoes

Potatoes are credited as the first vegetable grown in space.

In 1995, a team of researchers clipped 10 leaves from a potato plant, nestled them into beds of moistened soil, and shot half of them into space on the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Decades of research had already hinted that plants could, in fact, flourish outside of Earth’s atmosphere.

Within a couple weeks, the stems of the five cuttings that had remained here on Earth had swollen into golf ball-sized potatoes.

And, orbiting a few hundred miles off the surface of Earth, their weightless counterparts did the same.

The extra-terrestrial taters would eventually make their way back to Earth, where a battery of tests would reveal that the space tubers were normal.

In fact, as pictured they were nearly indistinguishable from their grounded tubers in most respects.

Today’s variety - Aura (Second early):

A French variety dating back to the 1950s.

Renowned for the wonderful flavour and firm cooking characteristics.

They have an interesting and eye-catching half-moon shape.

Long shaped, pale yellow skin, yellow flesh tubers with perfect cooking characteristics.

Ideal for roasting, chipping, boiling and steaming.

It has a high resistance to common scab.

Potato Day Shop 2021 HERE