While people may be busy attending St. Patrick’s Day parades, March 17 has a different meaning for some potato farmers across the country.
St. Patrick’s Day is the date where some growers have traditionally planted their early potatoes each year.
This is a tradition that Co. Wexford folklorist, Michael Fortune has encountered numerous times when compiling his living archive he created, called folklore.ie, where his collection of stories, old customs, and traditional ways of life are recorded.
Fortune said: “Although the number of small country gardens has declined, many older people talk of getting their seed potatoes set a few days before St. Patrick’s Day or on the day itself.
“My mother and father followed this rule every year and no St. Patrick’s Day would pass without some spuds being sown.”
He added that these early spuds would traditionally then be dug on June 29, the Feast of St. Peter and Paul.
In the video below, Fortune visited the farm of Noel Cullen in Blackwater, Co. Wexford and recorded the tradition, still continuing but on an industrial scale.
Other customs associated with the planting of potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day, Fortune explained, was through the youngest in the family being the first to plant on the day, as a sign of good luck.
While in Co. Wexford, the date for harvesting the early potatoes was at the end of June, Fortune said that in areas of north Leinster and in Ulster, the date was different.
In these areas, he said that while planting the potato was still done on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17), the early harvesting of the spuds would be done on July 12 (the date the Battle of the Boyne took place on).
This gave way to the term, “Plant with Paddy and Dig with Billy,” referring to the use of St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) and the July 12 (Battle of the Boyne) to base their sowing and digging dates on.
“I love the saying and it’s a great way to connect the orange and the green via the planting and digging of spuds,” Fortune said.