Cannibal potatoes

[bunn]

 Yesterday I noticed an odd smell from the vegetable cupboard.   Checking the wire potato basket, I found that the smell was coming from some potatoes and sweet potatoes that were very much past their best.  As in, saggy and dripping.  At some point in the urgency of putting away shopping, it looks like a bag of new potatoes had been slung on top of old potatoes, and the old potatoes had been forgotten, in effect a sort of Potato Oubliette

The old potatoes had responded to this cruel treatment in two ways: some had simply given up and rotted, but others had begun to grow in the darkness of the cupboard, taking water from the bodies of their dead comrades,and  had sent out great long white shoots.  Some had even formed tiny new potatoes. 

I felt that this robust opportunism deserved some sort of reward, so I gathered up the tiny new potatoes and some of the more enthusiastically shooting Big Bakers, shoved some garden compost into an old bin that I happened to have lying around (bottom perforated for drainage) and popped them in there.  Will they live?  Only time will tell!  If they do, then rather than having wasted them, I may even profit on the deal. 

Comments

[chainmailmaiden]

That's a good idea, I should try it sometime when we end up in a situation like that, I'd imagine they'll survive and do very well. My parents always used to get a good drop of potatoes each year when they dug out the compost bin and they'd grown from peelings and the occasional old, sprouting spud that had been thrown out.