Hundreds of spud lovers turn out for annual Shropshire Potato Day with three stand out varieties and some selling out
Hundreds of people turned out for Shropshire's biggest Potato Day and celebration of the humble spud - with rare varieties and three top favourites
Taking place at Wattlesborough Village Hall Potato Day has become a fixture of the Shropshire calendar, providing a showcase for hundreds of varieties of the versatile vegetable - and a vital date for keen growers.
For those used to picking up a standard pack of maris pipers the event proved an eye-opener, with some of the rarer variations on display - although not all were available to buy.
Rachel Strivener, chairwoman of Shropshire Organic Gardeners, said that the event has continued to grow, with Saturday's turnout eclipsing previous events, as Britain's love for the the potato shows no signs of diminishing.
The event provides potatoes to grow and buy yourself, rather than ones to take home and mash or bake for dinner.
Rachel said: "It was absolutely fantastic, I think we beat our number of visitors from last year. We had about 564 and we did run out of some of our potatoes unfortunately."
She explained that the Charlotte, Jazzy, and Swift varieties were quick to go.
Four bags of Charlotte potatoes were quickly snaffled up by eager punters.
Rachel said the Charlottes are a "very nice salad potato", adding: "It is great eating it cold or just steamed with some butter on it."
The Swifts also sold out with Rachel adding: "They are popular but the breeders were quite short on Swifts this year, basically I think because of the weather last year so we only had one small bag of those and they went pretty quickly."
Rachel said that they had seen visitors from far afield attending, including Birmingham and even Milton Keynes.
The event included a number of rarely seen varieties, and spectacular purple potatoes.
Rachel said: "We have a lovely chap called Bill who brings his stall. He has samples of different varieties he grows. He has them on display and is very knowledgeable and chats to the visitors and gives them advice."
While the event has a number of loyal attendees Rachel said they were keen to bring in new people to share the varieties available.
She said: "I think people are quite surprised. Obviously we have a lot of returning customers who are old friends to us now, we recognise them and they come every year, but it is the new people we want to encourage to try new types of potato.
"Some you will try in supermarkets but there are a lot of other ones. We get some pretty purple ones, the variety is practically endless and we need more breeders growing on the heritage varieties."
Rachel said that her own passion for potatoes comes from her background, as well as their versatility and home-grown benefits - for the body and the environment.
She said: "I have always been a vegetable grower, I trained in horticulture along time ago. SOG set up the potato day 22 years ago and I have always been interested in growing vegetables and stuff but also being an environmentalist I look at the fact we can grow absolutely fabulous potatoes in this country and a lot of people have moved towards pasta and rice and they all create quite a big carbon footprint, either coming from southern Europe or rice, which is coming from further afield."
Rachel added that despite their sometimes poor dietary reputation potatoes contain plenty of vitamins and goodness, and are a great way to introduce children to growing their own food.
She added: "Also the Potato Day would not happen without all the Shropshire Organic Gardeners members volunteering and they are an absolute great team to work with."
