In March and April this year, local groups came together to sow a community tattie patch at the farm. They paid up front to cover the costs, and with that, we bought the potato seeds, set up the plot, and ran all the sessions supporting people to plant and care for the crop. This is all paying off now – the early ones have come through, and we’re up to our oxters in tatties.

The Harvest So Far (June & July)

We’ve had over 40 folk come and help with the harvest. So far, the totals are:

Granton Community Garden community meals
23.2 kg harvested, cooked and eaten!

Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre
harvested and took home 60 kg

Community Renewal
harvested 103 kg for their community pantry on Pennywell Road

Spartans
harvested 40kg

For farm staff and volunteers etc
15kg

To farm veg bags and market stall
95kg

And we have only just begun!!!!! So many more tatties to go!

Why A Community Tattie Patch?

The community tattie patch creates a chance for lots of people to get involved in growing food, many for the first time. The patch is bringing people together around a staple food for many cultures – at every stage from growing to harvesting to eating.

It’s also another way for local communities to have a stake in the farm. This is a bit like how we offer our veg bags, which is a membership scheme called Community Supported Agriculture, where the members support the farm to grow the food, and then get their share of the harvest. By running things this way, we are rebuilding a direct relationship between the farm and the farm’s community. That used to be how things were, and it still is in some places, and it can be again here.

How Did We Organise As a Community?

North Edinburgh has an amazing network of organisations called R2 (the North Edinburgh Response and Recovery Group) that formed during the pandemic. Members meet regularly to come up with new projects and collaborations, and that’s how we set up the community tattie patch. With a bit of graft, it’s been a quick hop and a skip from an idea in winter 2024, to hundreds of kilograms of potatoes for local folk in summer 2025. Zero pesticides, plenty of community spirit.

As preparation for the 2025 North Edinburgh Community Festival, and for the anticipated harvest at the farm, members of the R2 network collected tattie recipes from the community and these were demonstrated at a cooking stall during the festival.

At the same time, we started sowing our tatties with the help of many hands: we planted over 170 kg of 23 varieties, with 140+ people helping to plant, weed and water the crop. This included 58 Primary 5 pupils, as well as folk from Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre, Spartans Community Foundation, Community Renewal, Urban Union, The University of Edinburgh, Queer by Nature, Youdum Suya, Sowing our Horizons, and Royston Wardieburn Community Centre, plus loads of help from the volunteers who attend our regular Tuesday and Thursday drop-in gardening sessions.

The R2 network secured funding for tattie-related community meals and recipe packs which have been shared throughout the community.

Click here to download the recipe pack as a PDF

What Varieties Did We Grow?

This bit is for those who like all the detail…

Between them, the groups planted a mix of first early, second early, and main crop varieties:

First early
Foremost, Jazzy, Maris Bard, Casablanca, Pentland Javelin, Rocket Seed and Sharpes Express

Second early
Anya, Charlotte, Maris Peer, Acoustic, Gemson, Estima, Nadine, Nicola and Wilja

Main crop
Alouette, Arran Victory, Java, Sarpo Mira, Maris Piper, Desiree and Orla

We planted a big variety partly because we want to hear from people about what they like from the crop. So far we have loved the Casablancas and Pentland Javelins. But also because different varieties may have different susceptibility to pests and diseases, and it’s a great chance to see how each variety does in our soil.

The harvest so far has outdone what we expected. We are also anticipating a bit of crop damage as the season progresses. The farm has been grazed for decades and this usually means that wireworm is present. We’ve seen a wee bit of this so far.

We’re expecting the main crop harvest in August, and we’ll update at the end on the grand total…