That is what the society has asked its members to do for this competition. Then to take the full bag on June 7 to the HortSoc tent at the Residents’ Association Summer Fair, Central Square, NW11.
Whoever has grown the biggest single potato, or the greatest total mass of potatoes, or the funniest looking one, will be the winners, only they won’t know that until the following Saturday at the Summer Flower Show.
The chances are that the winners will be young, since, as the society’s Marjorie Harris reported, members of the Kids Club took away most of the “Rocket First Early” seed potatoes. Most but not all. Our photo shows Marjorie in her Erskine Hill greenhouse, showing me the seed potato I am to take home in the special bag, to try my luck.
Both the Rocket variety and the bag-growing are novelties for me, so that will be fun. But as to competing, I prefer to write about those who enjoy it, or look up potato history. Which is very long in South America, where the naturally occurring tubers looked so different you would hardly recognize them, but only about 350 years in Europe, where we began by scorning them as food for animals, then for the poor until, via the disastrous famine in Ireland, gradually the potato established itself as the major dietary staple it is now.
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Mimosa
Are the fragrant flowers of mimosa, which conveniently for the floristry trade come out in February, less celebrated than they used to be?
Thoughts of wedding bouquets, Cecil Beaton’s flower arrangements and, possibly, the rise of a wilder floristry look, all prompted this question as I recently travelled through floriferous south west London.
From Richmond to Chiswick, magnolias are preparing to open, cherry blossom is already a picture and mimosa is in its full, sunny yellow dance.
Further north, it wasn’t until Camden Road, site of the trees in the photo, that mimosa really caught the eye again.
No, said John Dixon, plant manager of Camden Garden Centre, he didn’t think mimosa (Acacia dealbata to give it its proper name) has gone out of favour. They buy in about 50 plants from Italy each year.
Generally they sell all of them but transplant any leftovers into bigger pots, because, “this may look a small plant now but it will grow into quite a big tree”.
He says it is relatively unfussy, although too tender to be grown out in cold countryside. It likes full sun, as well it might, being native to Australia and Tasmania. Silver Wattle is its other common name, although why silver is not apparent in the plant we grow now.
What is apparent, close-up, is the touching delicacy of its globes of tiny florets and feathery leaves.
