UNLIKE my partner and her mum, who start going on about it just after midsummer’s day, I refuse to think too much about Christmas until at least early December — unless it’s about an important part of the dinner fare — potatoes.

Roasties are essential and so are runner beans, frozen from the summer glut, and new potatoes too, fresh from the ground — not from Morocco or some cold store where they will have lost that gorgeous flavour of the earth.

There is still time, just, to augment Christmas dinner with your own new potatoes.

Second cropping seed potatoes are available and, if they are popped in within the next few days, will produce small, full-flavoured new tatties to enliven the Christmas tastebuds probably numbed by all manner of food and drink through the morning.

Growing new potatoes for Christmas dinner is really easy — even if it feels wrong to plant them now. My early earlies go in the ground (conditions permitting) before the second week in March to be ready in late June.

This year I tried seven varieties. The old ones Arran Pilot and Pentland Javelin were a tad disappointing both in yield, pest resistance and texture.

Isle of Wight County Press: Striking red Duke of York potatoes.Striking red Duke of York potatoes.

Red Duke of York and Maris Bard have been flavoursome all-purpose potatoes and Accord their equal as a salad spud, but in the salad taste test that fiddly, misshapen Pink Fir Apple — like its counterparts Ratte and Anya — was tops.

Pink Fir Apple tubers are best eaten either with their skins on or served as delicious chunky chips.

Even when they have been stored for months in the cool, this variety retains its new potato taste, which is another way of getting proper new potatoes on the Christmas platter.

Isle of Wight County Press: Pink fir apple potatoes.Pink fir apple potatoes.

International Kidney (which can’t be called Jersey Royal, unless they come from the Channel isle) was top in terms of yield and taste grown in copious amounts of seaweed, courtesy of the Hovertravel slipway — harvested with permission — of course...

People have grumbled in recent years that Jersey Royals are not what they were but I must say they stood haulm and shoulders above the rest.

However, for a Christmas taste, go for quick-maturing varieties such as Rocket or Swift, planting them in big pots or potato bags, in the glasshouse.

Fill a potato bag or an old, pierced, folded down compost bag, large pot or an old, redundant recycling paper bin, with multi-purpose compost until it’s half full.

Lightly firm the compost, then set three seed potato tubers on the surface, ten inches apart. Add more compost to just cover them.

Soak the compost and place the container in a well-lit porch or greenhouse to start sprouting. When shoots appear, add a further layer of compost to cover them. Keep repeating this until the container is full.

Then just sit back, water sparingly and wait to dig-up a tasty prezzie in time for the big meal...