Our Garden (August 2010) – Kashif Ali Blogs

Welcome to the Growing & Glowing “Great Finniston Farm”

Lettuce, Tomato & Potato plants are clearly visible (from left to right)

Lovely & Juicy Home Grown Tomatoes – Superior in taste

Our Potato Crop

Talking about potatoes, my favourite, it is interesting to know that Potatoes are:

The most important crop in world after staple foods (wheat, rice & corn).
The most nutritious & easy to grow crop, this is why the most common also
Grown since 7000 years ago in Andes Mountains of South America
Potato is called “Apple of the Earth” in Persian & French. Similar name is used in Chinese.
It is the first vegetable to go & grow in space in 1995
They were first introduced to Europeans in the late 1500s as poor people’s food. It still is; my salute to Potato, it feeds billions cheaply.
They weren’t an immediate hit in Europe, many people blamed them for diseases & rallied against them because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible.
Only slowly it became the most eaten food, upon which people rely to survive.
Irish were the first ones to adopt it. So much so that a disease destroyed the potato crop in 1840. As a result Ireland lost half of its population, 1 million died of hunger & many millions left the country.

Now some Flowers, we start with the Queen, “Red Rose”