Yesterday the rain came, with fat, warm drops. I love summer rain, so I decided to have a poke around in the garden and allow the downpour to soak me through. And then I decided to harvest the potatoes.

The ‘Jersey Royal’ tubers we had planted had grown, and grown, and were still growing when I began fumbling around in the soil underneath their leaves. They were starting to branch out across the lawn and were reaching higher and higher every day. And underneath them was a sackfull of tubers, honeycoloured and fresh. I harvested most of them with my hands, grubbing around to find them, and turning occasionally with a fork to root out the deeper specimens.

Most gardeners have their own opinions on when to harvest new potatoes. Some say you should wait until the flowers have started to drop off. Others wait for the foliage to crinkle and fade a little. But the best way to find out is to embark on a little adventure in the soil and check the size of the tubers for yourself.

Make sure you give the bed a good, deep digging at the end of harvesting to ensure no tubers are left in the soil. If left, these could re-sprout the following year and are a very common source of blight.

And then eat the potatoes. The taste of a potato pulled from the soil only half an hour before eating beats anything you could buy from a supermarket hands down. We boiled these, but another excellent way to cook new potatoes, especially if you are growing lovely knobbly, nutty cultivars such as ‘Anya’ is to slice them very thinly and roast for 40 minutes in olive oil, with the juice of one lemon, a sprinkling of crushed chillies and a sprig of rosemary.

What early cultivars have you grown this year? And how do you eat them once you have harvested them?