Potato Day 07
It was quite a wrench to leave behind the venue where BOG Potato Day started and became such a major event in the calendar for gardeners across the region. We knew that we would not be able to continue for much longer at the Borders College at Galashiels, so, just over a year ago, we decided to make the move to the Borders Union Showground at Kelso.
This is a much bigger venue and we realised that it needed a larger event to make the day work, and so Potato Plus 2007 was born.
Roberta Carruthers, our Vice-Chairman co-ordinated the preparation with calm efficiency, and we had a spectacularly successful day!
Over 800 people came along, the biggest number yet. As usual, we had around 90 varieties of potato available for sale. This included the much vaunted Mayan Gold, a new species recently introduced from South America. It will be interesting to find out how people get on with this one. Later in the year, why not use the new website to let other BOG members know how the varieties you grew performed?
As usual, despite our best attempts to predict which varieties would be popular, some of them ran out very quickly. We really do try to anticipate demand, but we are sorry if you didn’t manage to some of the varieties you had set your heart on. We’ll be looking carefully at which ones went early when we order up for Potato Day 2008.
The Potato theme was continued in the cafe with a variety of delicious potato dishes, including “Cheesy Potato Boats”, the winner of the school recipe competition. Besides opportunities to eat potatoes, we also two cookery demonstrations. Fi Martynoga showed us how potatoes were used in The Guid Scots Diet of our 18th century forebears and members of Slow Food produced dishes that smelt absolutely delicious. We also had two fascinating talks by Alan Romans, potato expert, and Dr. Finlay Dale of the Scottish Crop Research Institute.
This year, we also had stalls for “green” businesses and conservation groups. People really appreciated the opportunity to buy their seeds, groceries, garden sundries, etc., etc. as well as their potatoes, onion sets and garlic. We were also able to provide a “bag creche” so that people didn’t have to carry all their purchases around and potato printing activities for the children.
This was certainly our most ambitious Potato Day yet. Preparations are already underway for next time, so please use the website to tell everyone how you get on with your spuds so that we can make 2008 even better!
