Topic: Homeguard Potatoes

[chriscross1966]

Who knows?  But when you try stuff you always need a back up.  There is a lot to be said for Charlotte, well watered with a box of poundland growmore in each trench.

Edited to add: Sarpo Mira and the like are my villains: great yield of revolting spuds.

That's wierd... on my last years attempts both the Sarpo strains gave good spuds.... Axona especially was good baked but they're both aa bit odd chipped, you have to cook at a lower temperature for a while cos they brown up too easily.... Neither of them boil/mash worth a d**n though....

[brown thumb]

its strange how some variety's differ in different soils and  regions  :-[ i always thought  one make of spud taste the same where ever it grew

[chriscross1966]

its strange how some variety's differ in different soils and  regions  :-[ i always thought  one make of spud taste the same where ever it grew

HTe more commercial varieties generally do, the older ones vary with soil a lot more.... remember that they nearly all started out as local landraces.... It's a reason to grow some TPS, you never know what you might get.....

chrisc

[Ellen K]

Even so, it might be the soil, my plot seems to be a landfill in a former clay pit.  But the sarpos I grew 2 years ago (mira and axona) were horrible, no flavour or texture at all and the first one I tried to bake exploded in the oven in spite of being on a skewer, ugh.  I can see whey they were developed, to feed the starving masses perhaps, but for hobby growers no way.  JMO though.

CC1966 in spite of our different results on the sarpos I am giving setanta a go this year on your recommendation (at least I think it was you), got 10 tubers from a seller on ebay and it will be interesting to see how we go.

But still think Charlotte is a good default.  Lovely spud as an early or MC.

[Ellen K]

Interestingly, this is what it says about Sarpo Mira on the Alan Romans website - so perhaps I was just doing it wrong:

Like Axona, Mira is extremely blight and virus resistant - the most resistant variety known at the moment. They are both on the floury side of general purpose and effort is needed to stop the tubers becoming too big and starchy -  cut the foliage off in say August to get good general purpose tubers. These varieties are not really late maincrops - they grow continuously all season unlike classic late maincrops which are day length sensitive and don't bulk up until late summer. They require a different mind set - instead of working hard to get the most from them, as with other varieties, it is necessary to monitor them and stop them at the point when the tubers are right for you. Both varieties have some slug resistance (but long growing period can mask this) and both store exceptionally well. Mira is drought tolerant. Peasant survival food!  
 

[grannyjanny]

We live in Cheshire & wanted to grow 'Cheshire' potatoes. We asked a farmer which to buy as we bought ours from him before we got the lotty. OH, bless him, thought we could just buy Cheshire seed potatoes, I think it was rocket. We planted them along with Swift & the rocket were horrible. So different soils do make a difference. Ours is a very sandy soil. Having said that, the ones from the farmer didn't taste as good as our own grown ones, we bought a few to compare.

[chriscross1966]

We live in Cheshire & wanted to grow 'Cheshire' potatoes. We asked a farmer which to buy as we bought ours from him before we got the lotty. OH, bless him, thought we could just buy Cheshire seed potatoes, I think it was rocket. We planted them along with Swift & the rocket were horrible. So different soils do make a difference. Ours is a very sandy soil. Having said that, the ones from the farmer didn't taste as good as our own grown ones, we bought a few to compare.

Rocket isn't the tastiest spud, it's really grown for its exceptionally fast cropping.... I'd say you only really want half a dozen of them for ultra first earlies.... start them off in January in the GH and you'll be tipping them out at the end of March/start of April, start some lady Christls adn Pentalnd Javelin off at the same time adn they'll come out in that order, LC adn PJ are both a lot tastier than Rocket (TBH there are wallpaper pastes that are tastier than Rocket grown on some soils). LC is one of the nicest tasting earlies going and makes a great potato salad, and PJ bakes as well as all the rest of the Pentlands, so I tend to put a half dozen smallish ones in the microwave for 3 minutes, then run them onto skewers adn into the oven for 20 minutes or so at 200 degrees.... mini baked potato kebabs.....

[Julia]

Well very interesting comments, also making me laugh regarding 'vile, disgusting etc'.  I had a look last week and the potatoes were tiny.  Still no flowers, but have decided to leave them until about the end of August.