Potatoes in the sky

There are challenges unique to growing on a balcony and there are challenges that every gardener faces. This year a very hot late spring/early summer has left a lot of us suffering. On a balcony that is compounded by the already dry and hot nature of gardening on our balcony and... nothing, nothing has done as well as in the previous two years. And this has got me severely down, I don't want to go outside and I apologise to everyone who accidentally sees the balcony.

But there has been one bright point in an otherwise dismal year: or first crop of potatoes. I planted an seed potato from this years box to grow and covered it, as it grew, with more and more compost. It got to work. We didn't get a massive amount but 800g is nothing to complain about.

We are actually really pleased. It was so much fin pulling them up. The big ones teasing us by being right at the bottom. Each little golden nugget was welcomed with a squee. We have no intention of keeping them very long. We pulled them yesterday and only two have survived being eaten so far. And I have plans for them. So Stephen kindly cleaned them up while I went and had a bath, then a nap... but then I got cooking.

Last night we had most of them simply, and gorgeously roasted. We didn't peel, the skins where too soft to bother, just cut them in to bits and threw them in our roasting tin. They came out like little jewels and tasted just as precious. Soft, buttery, nommy.