The Organic Centre Potato Day in the International Year of the Soil Saturday 14th March 12-5pm.

national | environment | event notice Thursday March 12, 2015 23:19 by spud

Our annual Potato Day is the best Humble Spud Festival in the country!

Potatoes are not only very versatile as a food in dishes, they are good for the soil and will grow in just about any soil. They dislike soggy soil though, because they do all their growing underground. Our annual potato day will again showcase how easy it is to grow potatoes as a pioneer or start-up crop for new gardeners, breaking up heavy soils and also various new ways to grow them more easily with no dig under plastic, under thick mulch and in loose, loamy soil in ridges and beds.

Our main guest speaker Trevor Sargent and Admission is Free

The programme of the day:

Our main guest speaker Trevor Sargent will link potato growing to the all- important issue of soil fertility.

Aoife Cox from the legendary blog thedailyspud will give us the latest news and trends on potatoes.

Horticulturalists Dermot Carey and David Langford will showcase The Heritage Irish Potato Collection, which recently won an Irish Food Writers’ Guild award.

Our own Hans Wieland will offer his famous Polytunnel Tour de force and there will be information on varieties, planting ideas, blight control and our traditional coping session. We will also have recipes on how to cook and roast the wonderful spud.

A great variety of organic seed potatoes will be on sale, from first earlies Orla to blight resistant maincrop Sarpo Axona.

This will also be the first of many fundraising events as part of our 20th Anniversary Celebrations.