THERE were only two vegetables that I had any success in growing as a child when I was handed a dibber and a garden fork by my parents and let loose on our Glasgow back-garden – potatoes and rhubarb. And rhubarb took no effort at all – it was more like a colourful weed that grew largely unheeded.

There were other attempts at carrots, peas and so on, but the crop, if disease and blight didn’t get at them, was paltry considering the effort that went into it.

Only the potatoes were of sufficient quantity to grace the table on a few occasions, although even lifting three or four rows was sore on the back, and it seemed a lot of work to clean them off when you could just as easily buy them ready washed at the supermarket. So I was never really a candidate to star in The Good Life.

Actually, back then you didn’t even have to go to the shops as a fruit and veg van came round every week. As a reader once told me: “My mother, being a farmer’s daughter, and thus familiar with various varieties of potatoes, asked the laddie on the van what type of potatoes they were. After a brief pause he replied, ‘Raw yins, missus’.”

Yes, what variety of potatoes. Considering we individually scoff sacks of them every year, we know little of varieties other than Maris Pipers and Jersey Royals. Or at least I didn’t until I attended Potato Day in Glasgow’s Dennistoun at the weekend.

Now the title may not sound overly exciting, but there were hundreds of people over the day strolling around the Reidvale Centre talking potatoes, buying potatoes, and just generally having a relaxing, good-natured time. There was even a four-piece group there, The Barrow Band, who sang songs about fruit and vegetables. Pretty certain that was the first time I have heard a song just about carrots.

So the idea was that people with allotments, folk with window boxes, even just enthusiasts growing potatoes in a bag, could come along, look at the 60 or so varieties of potatoes, buy a few of the seed potatoes at only 20p a go, and take them home and grow them.

It’s the sixth year of Potato Day, which is run by the Allotments Forum. The driving force behind it is Jan MacDonald, originally from Skye, who has tended her own allotment in Glasgow for 10 years.

“It was six years ago,” she tells me, “that I went to a similar event in Dunblane, which was a bit of a drive in bad weather, and wondered why there wasn’t an event like this in Glasgow. So we have organised it every year since then.”

Instead of sending away for large bags of seed potatoes from suppliers, you can simply buy a potato or two of different varieties and try them out on your patch of ground, and see what works.

Allotments are growing in popularity as folk want to know where their food supply is coming from, and also want to grow food knowing it hadn’t been sprayed by a variety of chemicals.

Others want to encourage their children to get involved in getting back to nature. Said Jan: “That’s the thing about vegetables and encouraging children to eat them. If they grow them they will eat them, or at least they will try it.”

The trick is, said Jan, is to allow your children to have fun. If you dragoon them along to your allotment and order them to pick weeds, then they will probably not want to rush back. “If they just want to sit there making mud pies, let them,” says Jan.

Not that every parent has green fingers. Jan reckons that grandparents often worked on vegetable plots after the war, but then when supermarkets became common, the next generation were happy to shop instead, so today’s children are having to turn to grandparents to get an inkling of what growing your own food is all about.

In Glasgow, allotments have been in decline as housebuilders and others have nibbled away at the ground made available. The Glasgow Allotments Forum is trying to reverse this decline. There are now more than 1,000 people on the waiting list for an allotment in Glasgow, with a waiting time of over eight years in the popular west end sites.

Elsewhere, though, there are sites. if folk are willing to travel. “The bigger problem,” says Jan, “is finding the people willing to take office in the management committees that run allotments. It’s the same for all societies these days. People do not have the time or the inclination to become involved in organising things.”

You might think that pottering around an allotment is a great way to relieve stress, but Jan says you have to make it your main hobby and devote time to it regularly, otherwise it will become overgrown, the management committee will want to know why you are not looking after it, and you’ll end up with more stress than you were trying to alleviate.

But it’s worth the effort it seems. Behind one of the stalls is Herald reader John Marshall, from Auchtermuchty, who has been in the seed potato business all his life. So what’s the appeal of growing your own tatties? “It’s fun, it’s easy to do, it’s growing your own food full of flavour, it’s nostalgia, and yes, it’s a bit of showing off when you can put them on the table and tell people you grew them yourself.”

John is enthusiastic, and reassures me you don’t need much more than lots of water and a bit of sunshine. Well, we’ve certainly got lots of the former here in Scotland.

There are “First early” potatoes that are ready in only 100 days, then a “Second early” that will come through in 120 days, then a main crop in September and October.

There are red potatoes, blue potatoes, even ones with a black spiral in them. It’s tempting. I wonder if my daughter would mind me packing up the trampoline so that I can grow potatoes..Well, perhaps not.