Potato Patches, also known as Patches Plain or, colloquially, ''The Patches'', is an agricultural area and uninhabited rural settlement in

Tristan da Cunha Tristan da Cunha (), colloquially Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately from Cape Town in South Africa, from Saint Helena ...

, in

Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha is a British Overseas Territory located in the South Atlantic and consisting of the island of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha including Gough Island. Its name wa ...

, an

overseas territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or an ...

of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, in the

South Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe and ...

.Potato Patches in the official website of Tristan da Cunha
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History

The plain has been used for

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

purposes since the 1860s.

Geography

Potato Patches lies 3.7 km southwest of

Edinburgh of the Seven Seas Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is the main settlement of the island of Tristan da Cunha, in Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, in the South Atlantic Ocean. Locally, it is referred to as The Se ...

and represents the largest

plain In geography, a plain is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands ...

of Tristan da Cunha island. For this reason the area is used by the local population as an agricultural area, the largest on the island. It is composed of various cultivated plots, hence the name, and some scattered rural farmhouses, from the coast to the M1 road. The field is composed of irregularly arranged beds. In the beds, which are surrounded by walls to protect them from the weather, mainly

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es and other vegetables have been planted for self-sufficiency for about 160 years. Every family on the island has their own fields that they cultivate themselves. The plain spans from Spring Gulch to Big Sandy Gulch, next to the Boatharbour Bay and the hill of Hillpiece, on the slopes of

Queen Mary's Peak Queen Mary's Peak is the summit of the island of Tristan da Cunha, in the South Atlantic Ocean. It has an elevation of 2,062 metres (6,765 ft) above sea level. It is named after Mary of Teck, the Queen consort of King George V. It is the hi ...

(2,062 m), a

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

and the summit of the island. It is crossed by Walsh Gulch, who separates the southern plots from the other ones. To the south of Spring Gulch is located Runaway Beach, home of the island's rock pools.

Transport

There is one road, the M1, which connects the Patches with

, and is used by the few private cars on the island. A bus service called "Potato Patches Flier" (using a 24-seat Isuzu mini school bus from

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

) is available to pensioners in town to travel to places around the island.

References

External links

Potato Patches (Tristan's official website)

Tristan da Cunha Farming (Tristan's official website)
{{Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Tristan da Cunha Populated places in Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

History

Geography

Transport

See also

References

External links