It’s getting to that time of the year when the potatoes need to come out of the ground.  Ours are earlies (which we planted rather late) and won’t store very well so we are just digging them up when we need to use them.  A lot of them have got potato scab and look like this.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them, it’s just purely cosmetic (but this is enough to stop the supermarkets selling them).  This however is not so good.

These little holes are a sure sign of slug damage.  It never looks too bad on the outside, but when you cut them open this is what it looks like.

Quite often the whole potato has to be thrown away.  The longer the potatoes stay in the ground, the more likely they are to be damaged by slugs.  So it’s potatoes with every meal for the next couple of weeks!  If you’ve got maincrop potatoes, and you haven’t done so already, it’s probably worth lifting them on a dry day and storing them somewhere cool and dark.  That’ll stop the slugs getting to them.