Here is where to begin: The Whitchurch Potato Festival, in Hampshire on the 24th and 25th of January.

There will be many, many, varieties of potato to choose from (judging by past years) and even some sexy disease resistant varieties. You can also get gardening advice, buy or swap seeds and buy plants on the day. It’s usually a couple of quid to get in and make sure you get a catalogue of the varieties that will help you choose the varieties by cooking method and pest/disease resistance.

I can’t recommend these days enough. They allow you to buy small quantities of seed potatoes, in contrast to often having to buy kilos of them from the seed merchant catalogues. Tubers are priced individually at 15p each, or you can still buy them by the 2.5kg bag. This means you can buy just enough for your space and try several varieties to get crops across a longer period or to find ones you prefer the taste of.

My own favourites include:

‘Epicure’ - always reliable, good cropper and untouched (on my patch at least) by pest or disease.
‘Fleur Pecheur’ - Pink potatoes, lovely roasted, small size but lots of them.
‘Arran Victory’ - lots of fab purple potatoes.

PS. I bought a bag of shallots ‘Jermor’ at the festival last year and they were a real success. I’ll be trying a different variety this year. Simply plant into small pots and plant them out when the weather warms up a bit in early spring. They needed almost no attention apart from a bit of water for the first few weeks, I harvested simply bags of them in august.

You have probably already noticed, but here are a few pointers for gerdening in the cold.

Don’t leave potted plants sitting in dishes of water, because the rootball is likely to be wet when the water in the dish freezes the cold will travel into the roots of the plant. This is not likely to do them any good. I usually put pots on their sides in wet and cold weather to help stop the roots getting too wet.

Planting, digging and sowing are usually discouraged if the groud is waterlogged or frozen. Not only will the work be difficult, it can also damage the structure of the soil and most plants and seeds won’t thrive in cold and wet ground. Wait until it warms up a bit first.

Feed your local birds. It’s tough beight small and hungry at this time of year, supplies of berries and insects are low and the cold weather means they need more calories to survive. Peanuts, bacon rind, crumbs of cake and seed mixes will all help them survive to eat the caterpillars off your roses next summer. Try to find a place to put out water too, I have to remove the ice from my bird bath daily but watching them splash about when I get back into the warmth makes the job worthwhile.

Perhaps you will be rewarded by a sighting of one of these little fellas, like I was today, for your efforts.