Topic: Did anyone else grow "Setanta" potatoes this year?

[chriscross1966]

If so how did you find them as a crop?... Mine would be the perfect baker if they were a little bit bigger, but I think my spuds struggled with the conditions I gave them this year, the PFA's loved the wet August but the rest had sort of finished growing by then and there wasn't enopugh muck in what was rather shallow soil for them to get proper big.... THis year the new plot will have had epic amounts of manure (something I didn't have last year when the spuds were going out).... Setanta are currently the reason I won't bother with Desiree next year. I like Desiree as a spud but it has a scab problem and I find it pulls in the slugs too.... though next year the plot will get a dosing of nemtaodes at the right time of year, I managed to do that on the old plot in 2009 and didn't get any slug damage at all...

chrisc

[delboy]

I adde them to my plot this year, mainly because I was told they have a good resistance to blight.

The yields were good and they do make good chips and roast spuds. Haven't used them for mash/boiling as I still have kestrels.

The only problem was that they didn't look all that pretty. Most of the skins were rough and scaly, though some did come out smooth. I had manured heavily...

Pulled them out in the 3rd week in September as there was a major slug attack going on!

No massive spuds but very few small ones.

[chriscross1966]

re: Scaly..... I did notice it on some of them but it was nothing like as bad as the full-blown scab that I had onsome of mine... The Dell's didn't get it and neither did the PFA..... all the rest had some to some extentr but the Desiree were worst...

Will be harvesting Congo tonight.... last of my mains (though they were grwon in tubs) grown from microtubers from Alan Romans.....

chrisc

[Digindep]

ON our site this year four of us grew Desiree...all well scabbed..have since noticed they are going green in stoage...even though they are stored in potato sacks (paper) and kept in a cold/cool dark shed....as for many years past...no where near the yeild as in the past............

[Jayb]

I grew the couple you sent me in a bag, I'm happy with the amount of potatoes although they are a tad on the small size, around the medium size. Blight wise they held up pretty well and survived several waves which took out a few other varieties and some tomatoes. 

I tried some when they were quite small and from what I remember were an ok flavour. I look forward to tasting them in the next week or so. I just hope they are tastier than the Sarpos I've tried, though I suspect they will be too floury for my taste.

Tubers seem to have remained free from slug damage and I didn't notice any scab. I'll save a few to try in the open ground next year and hopefully get some larger tubers. 

[realfood]

I grew them for the first time and have a huge crop of large potatoes, slug free and floury. Good real earthy potato taste which got the thumbs up from other plotters who I gave samples to taste. However, they were the first of my potatoes to get foliage blight, though they seem to have tuber resistance to blight. A thick skin to ward off the slugs. The foliage grew to about 1.5 m high, double the height of about 10 different varieties of potato growing in the same bed.

[galina]

I grew them this year.  Really impressed with their yield and slug resistance.  For some reason almost all of mine all came out very large.  But yes, last year I had hardly any big potatoes with any variety either.

Setanta are nice bakers.  I will happily grow them again.

[Paulh]

Found this old thread. I grew Setanta this year only because T&M sent free packets of it as a "new" variety. Many of the comments above are true to my experience. I had some slug damage but annoyingly there's a little hole (not much bigger than a pin prick) in the tough skin and a cavern hollowed out inside, which makes sorting for storage frustrating.

Does anyone grow it by choice?

[chriscross1966]

I sort of stopped growing it eventually.... I like it as a spud, but it just doesn't seem to want to get big enough on my ground for baking....

[Jayb]

I didn't really love them to eat, coupled with the second year I grew them, this time in open ground, they remained more of a medium size, I didn't bother again.

[Paulh]

Thanks. I'm wondering about whether to grow them next year. I can't say that the few we've eaten so far are special, but they did crop heavily and not too slug damaged nor blighted, which are big pluses.

[chriscross1966]

If you can get them try some Kerrs Pink.... they're a similarly "Irish" potato (see also "Rooster" for instance) but the taste and texture is phenomenal... I was put on to them after a conversation with an Irish friend ended up with the phrase :
"I can't believe I'm stood here, listening to an Englishman tell me what a good potato is, get some Kerrs Pink"...

Your local potato day might have it as after a few years of being a bit of a "track it down at a specialist and expect a hole in your wallet" expat Irish folks seem to have created enough of a market for people like Pennards Plants to stock it ("You're the first person to ask me for them that didn't have an Irish accent")