Also, when you plant them at Labour Weekend you are pretty well assured they will be in prime condition by Christmas Eve and excellent for dinner the next day where the grower can proudly declare "I grew them . . . can't get any fresher than this."
The only downside is being told that it is slightly unusual to see so many new potatoes the size of golf balls.
I have not dabbled in the pursuit of tuber torture since that time but the decision not to plant them again was driven more by the fact they took up too much room and all you got to see were swathes of leafage.
I wanted to see expanding and potentially (in time) edible things. So I stick to above-ground examples of veg and herbs. That helps make me look like a gardener, sort of.
Potatoes are easy to grow and up Pukekohe way the landscape is widely speckled with their leafage, as are many paddocks around these parts, too, I daresay.
While there are no signs of spud life in my miniature paddock there are plenty of them, and in many a form, in the great commercial freezers of the land.
When I were a lad you got your spuds from the vege man and after you peeled them you either boiled them or roasted them. Then you either mashed them or tipped gravy over them and that was that.
Now it appears the humble old aproned vege man has been touched by a great magic spell and turned into Jamie Oliver.
There are wedges, chunky and thin-sliced items. Beer batter and sort of breadcrumb-coated jobs.
There are things called "roasters" and, like the wedges, come smothered in everything from sea salt and garlic to rosemary, chilli and lime.
There are hash browns and there are croquette things.
So I kind of figured there must have been a lot of fine spud seasons of late until I began glancing at that wonderful mystery puzzle called "the fine print".
A lot of the fancy-flavoured lines arrived from Australia - kind of like a lot of the fish stuff which arrives from China, the Philippines and other spots a lot further "up the coast".
But in terms of the easy-to-grow spud I spotted the coo-dee-grar (sorry but I can't spell coup de grâce). It arrived in the form of a familiar piece of packaging with a proud and local (sort of) label.
Dear old Wattie's. That slice of Hawke's Bay industrial history started by Sir James which embraced local produce and the growers of it.
There on the colourful face of the packet of little crumb-coated potato balls was that fine red emblem Sir James would have been proud to still see gracing the freezing trays - but I'm not so sure what he would have thought about the fine print on the back.
For there it is: "Product of Belgium.''
We're getting spuds mashed, balled up and baked up in Belgium? Come on, Belgium is not the potato capital of Europe.
I believe that title should go to the Irish, who invented the art of spud harvesting, although the potato blight-driven great famine of the mid-19th century was a setback, to say the least.
Then I spotted that some packets of hash browns also had that same European country of origin stamped upon the packet.
I like their chocolates but come on, Brussels, if it comes to veg stick to the sprouts, yeah?
I never used to embrace the consumer awareness-driven practice of "check where it's from" but I do now, even more so after I looked up Belgium in the Atlas and well, batter my spuds, it is the same shape as the leftover potato fritter in the fridge.
Things are getting scary.
