It was in April 07 that I read in the Sunday Times about the fantastically tasty potatoes on the Ile de Batz, near Roscoff on the coast of Brittany. The article described how the islanders grow potatoes in seaweed. I have been aware for some time of seaweed as a healthy source of nutrition with important trace elements and had tried to integrate this foodstuff into my diet. I made Irish lava bread, which was not to my taste. I gathered and dried bladderwrack from the beach and crushed it down with a pestle and mortar, putting it in a pepper grinder to sprinkle on my food instead of salt. I still make and enjoy sushi. But growing these potatoes seemed a good idea.

Early in 2008 I decided to try growing potatoes in a mixture of seaweed and soil. I had read that if you plant potatoes in an old tyre and then raise the soil level up as they grow, adding more tyres, that you could generate a good harvest within a small space. Over spring and early summer I tried this and had the soil level up to about 5 feet, with a bushy showing leafage at the top. I harvested them in July but it didn’t quite work out as expected. Although the leaves grew up through all the tyres, there wasn’t much of a harvest and the potatoes were mainly at the bottom of the tyre stack. I think I added the soil and stacked the tyres too late. Also 2008 wasn’t a very good growing year in the UK due to poor weather. The small harvest I had, of several potato types, was very tasty and potatoes seem to like growing in seaweed. This year I planted them higher up, in the 4th tyre. Although the season is starting a bit late (again !) they seem to be really healthy.
In September my partner and I took a trip to the Ile de Batz to find these potatoes and try them for ourselves. We booked a room for a few days at Ty Va Zadou, run by Marie-Pierre Prigent and her family. The island is a treat and on the first day there we set off walking to track down the potatoes. We found fennel bulbs, lots of spring greens, parsley, globe artichokes and other vegetables growing there, even a field or two covered in seaweed, but the potato season had ended. Wild nasturtiums (capocines) and pot marigolds (soucis), two of my favourite flowers, grew in profusion all over the island.
I resolved to ask our fine hostess, Madame Prigent where we might find some of these potatoes, known as the ‘pearls of the island’, the next morning. I lay awake conjugating the necessary verbs for some time! Strangely enough she beat us to it and came out at breakfast with the very article I had read 17 months before. I tried to tell her that I had the article at home and that I had cut it out and put in a box to save but my limited French told her only that I had left it in a wood! She told us that her son Monsieur J. Prigent runs a ‘creperie’ called La Cassonade, where the potatoes would be available ‘a midi’. Although we had only just finished breakfast we headed down to the restaurant for ‘patates’ at 12. La Cassonade has a special oven in which to bake the ‘BatzTats’ and we ordered a lunch, which came with three perfectly formed, baked potatoes. They were easily the tastiest potatoes I have ever eaten.
We could only eat 2 each and smuggled the remaining two out of the restaurant to photograph and for our picnics on the island. Next year I am going to get ‘BatzTatz’ growing right to the top of my tyre columns! Even without the potato experience, the Ile de Batz is a wonderful place to stay and we had an excellent week there.