Katie Herring is sales and marketing manager for Cultivate

WE'RE inundated with locally-grown, summer salad produce at the moment: leafy green lettuce, plump local cherry tomatoes and crunchy, fresh cucumbers.

We're also seeing our local salad potatoes come through in the form of organic Charlottes from Sandy Lane Farm at Tiddington.

Charlotte potatoes are relatively small spuds, with creamy skin and light yellow flesh.

Their waxy nature and fresh flavour makes them perfect for boiling and eating cold as part of a salad, although they work equally well roasted or boiled and served warm.

If you're after a potato salad you could pick up a ready-made version in your local supermarket but making your own is so simple and the flavour and texture will be infinitely better than any shop-bought version.

Once I knew we'd be getting salad potatoes at our stops I started searching for salad recipes and didn’t realise quite how many options there were.

It turns out the version I’m most familiar with, consisting of cold potatoes and mayo, is actually an American invention, adapted from the European-style salad that was taken across the pond in the nineteenth century.

Potato salad is widely believed to have originated in Germany: the Teutonic type is typically made with vinegar or olive oil, herbs and bacon and the biggest difference is that it’s served warm, not cold.

One of the first recipes ever mentioned comes from 1597 and includes prunes, wine, oil and vinegar, but these days a quick internet search will garner all kinds of tasty combos: potato salad with maple and mustard dressing; warm potatoes with smoked mackerel and horseradish and hot, buttery potatoes with samphire and mint are just a few suggestions that got my mouth watering.

I even came across a Japanese twist on this typically Western dish which requires you to mash the potatoes and add rice vinegar and Japanese hot mustard to the mayonnaise.

Regardless of which version you opt for they key is getting your hands on the right potato and with our locally grown, organic Charlottes you really can’t go wrong.

They are likely to be around for a few more weeks so plenty of time to try out the plethora of potato salad recipes out there.