Electric Green

Time locked potato, after the sea witch Here we are. It is early April. The sun is shining spring is sprung and they are forecasting snow for mid week, (surely some mishtake? Ed). I have gardened myself to a standstill. Sown spinach, calendula, leeks, more leeks, tomatoes, aubergines (they never do for me but I always try), cauliflowers, mangetout, sweet peas and cosmos. I have potted up my rooted rose cuttings (well, some of them) and my penstemon cuttings. I have been to the garden centre and bought lots of compost, and herbs and some borage seed. Most things are sprouting like mad. I drove down the motorway to Bath the other day in the sunshine. By the time I drove back a couple of hours later the hedges were conspicuously greener. Looking around my own garden I’m always amazed that some plants hang on all through winter, struggling a little but basically ok. The moment the weather warms up they can’t hack it and turn their toes up, little roots not keeping up with the cha...

While making the tea the other night I idly wondered how much green potato you would have to eat to get solanine poisoning. Potatoes are in the nightshade family (look at the flowers – similar to tomato flowers, above) and I am sure I once read that if they were introduced now they would not be approved as a food plant. According to a swift web-trawl , the answer is, apparently, not all that much. Solanine develops due to the action of light on potatoes but the green colour that the potato skin becomes is down to chlorophyll rather than the toxic glycoalkaloid. So although the two things are related, the green-ness is no absolute indicator of how much solanine is present. Solanine is part of the plant’s defence against pests and apparently commercial varieties are screened to minimise human consumption. And since the lethal dose is around 5mg for each kg body weight, green potatoes are best avoided as the alternatives can include diarrhoea, vomiting, dizziness, hallucinations, paralysi...