This year, the farm worked together with community organisations from North Edinburgh to create a 500 square metre community tattie patch. Organisations including Community Renewal, Muirhouse Kirk, Granton Community Gardeners, Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre, Spartans and Sowing Our Horizons provided funds for the farm to purchase potato seed, prepare the land and manage the growing and harvesting of a big, beautiful, diverse plot of tatties.

The idea was co-created with R2 (North Edinburgh Response & Recovery Group), who have been puzzling over how to get more locally grown food into local community meals and pantries. Also, the team at North Edinburgh Community Festival had hatched a plan to throw a fabulous tattie celebration at the festival in May 2025, with a gathering of tattie recipes from the community, a baked potato stall and potato cooking demonstrations. So it had to be tatties.

Sowing to Harvest

Over 140 people from community organisations came and helped to plant and weed, including 62 people from Davidsons Mains Primary and a team from Edinburgh University. We planted 26 varieties, an even split of First Earlies, Second Earlies and Main crops. It was so great to have so many people out in the field helping us. Once planted, our incredible volunteers spent several hours a week making sure the patch was watered during the very dry early summer, piling on mulch to keep the moisture in and helping weed out the thistles that proliferated.

Harvest started at the end of June and lasted all the way until early September. Community groups returned and harvested for their community, pantries and meals in North Edinburgh. Our volunteers also helped to harvest for the farm’s share of the crop which went into our veg bags and market stall, as well as feeding our staff and providing food at our own weekly community meals and events.

We harvested just over 1000 kilos of potatoes! And it was so much fun. People loved searching for our colourful treasure in the soil: tatties in pale browns, purples, reds, pinks and even blues. The 1000kg was split almost evenly between the farm and community organisations with 480 kg going to nine community organisations and 540 kg to the farm (370 kg for our veg bags and market stall, and the rest for volunteers, staff, community meals and community events).

Celebrating the Harvest

On 23 August, SCRAN Academy offered up a really delicious tattie harvest meal using five different tattie varieties (Heidi Reds, Blue Alouettes, Arran Victories, Sarpo Miras and Charlottes). They created dishes that really highlighted the differences in taste, texture and colour between the different varieties. It was a great day with folk from community organisations, our veg bag recipients, allotment holders and volunteers coming and eating and chatting together and of course harvesting even more tatties. Des, one of our long term volunteers read out a poem about tatties in Scots that was loved by all:

Frae Shaw Tae Mooth

Ilka Thursday aifternuin
Finds us at the gairden yett
O the agroecologic fairm,
Impatient tae get stairted.

We’re soon allotted tae a task,
Weedin, sortin, sic collaboration,
Aye, tattie howkin, ye neednae ask
Has been a richt preoccupation.

The ootcome ye hae afore yer een,
A hearty meal an braw,
Aye, whaurs yer pizza, pastas noo?
Oor spuds aboon them aw!

Des Nolan, undergairdener

Why it Matters

For the farm, the tattie project was a great way for us to realise our farm aims. We want as many people as possible to engage with the farm and food growing, and have as many routes as possible to get our food onto plates in North Edinburgh. Because the community organisations were able to contribute to our up-front costs, and the partner organisations and volunteers came and helped to sow, care for and harvest the plot, we could make all this happen without suffering financial loss.

Most people don’t understand the true cost of food and the amount of work that goes into the veg on our plates. It’s hard to make food affordable without penalising our planet and our workers by intensive petro-chemical farming that ruins ecosystems and depends on cheap labour. This project felt like such a joyful move in the opposite direction where we worked with the community to get food to plates, brought a bit of income for the farm and truly celebrated the huge diversity of the tattie that is so much a part of our multicultural communities’ diets.

What Next?

In 2026, North Edinburgh Community Festival is going to celebrate legumes (beans and peas) and we are looking forward to growing some with them and getting loads of people involved. But we also really loved the tattie patch and if anyone wants to continue that collaboration, we are definitely interested. Get in touch!