Allotments 4 All
Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Plot22 on September 19, 2021, 14:28:57
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Just got my Cara late potatoes up. Skipped 20% of them due to Eelworm. My wife has tried to salvage some by peeling enough for a couple of days but has still ended up discarding a greater percentage. Size wise very good but not many per root. I grew them some time back and had a similar problem. I also grew Harmony which went over quite quickly but had very little Eelworm problem. I find choosing a main crop from the Allotment Association a major problem as we have tried many varieties if they grow well without Eelworm problems then they boil down in the water as one of my fellow allotment neighbours has said today. In fact I have given her some of my Cara that I chopped whilst digging them up today. Yes I get them up with a spade otherwise I fork too many. I am moving towards just growing earlies and second earlies but really do not want to go down that path as I pride my self in being almost self sufficient.
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I gave up on maincrop because of the multiple problems. Now I grow Pentland Javelin and Charlotte, both of which keep right through winter, I know you don't get the weight of crop but otherwise I don't see a difference.
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I would add Pink Fir Apple to that list. Beautiful as an early, with fantastic flavour. But they also keep through the winter, and have one huge advantage, that they keep firm no matter how much they are cooked, eg in a casserole.
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For me, it's slugs. I find the first earlies aren't too affected (Swift and Charlotte this year) and Kestrel as a second early has real resistance - about one potato from 24 plants was slugged, even though I didn't lift them until the end of August. The Kestrel just about keep to Christmas if we want. I try a row of maincrop from time to time - Vale's Sovereign this year which were good but about a third were slightly damaged and not enough good ones to be worth storing. It will be just Charlotte and Kestrel next year (unless ...).
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It's been too dry for me to get a good crop. Then I allowed a crop of self sown sunflowers grow in the middle of the crop. Because they are pretty but it really wasn't a good idea.
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Glad I'm not the only one who does that (Sunflowers). I have found that Charlotte/Carlingford/Nicola are all ready before the slugs get going and keep well beyond Christmas.
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I think my main problem is wireworm damage. But added to that is some scab and the inevitable slug damage, and then the blight arrived. Losses were well above average. Quite bad on the kestrel and Charlotte, but I'd also tried a few Vivaldi. They were absolutely dreadful. Not a good year at all. I'll be checking my records and trying to use a bit of the plot that has not grown spuds for a few years for next season.
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Have they got a nematode for wireworms? I don't have an issue with them so haven't looked.
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I let the self set marigolds and evening primrose flourish in my potato patch this year. Come digging up time I had trouble finding the haulms! And now of coutse every drop of rain fetches up another forest of seedlings....
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Have they got a nematode for wireworms? I don't have an issue with them so haven't looked.
Good suggestion. I'll have a browse.
I have found the AHDB pages on potato problems. It's terrifying. There are literally dozens of diseases and I'm now convinced my spuds have got most of them!!
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I have not grown any main potatoes for a few years but I thought I would give them a try again this year I got some Albert Bartlett rooster seed potatoes which seem to have done quite well I have not tried them yet but the yield was very good and no scab so will wait and see what they are like
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"I have found the AHDB pages on potato problems. It's terrifying. There are literally dozens of diseases and I'm now convinced my spuds have got most of them!!"
Keep well clear of the NHS website, Beersmith!
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My Maris Bard were savaged by slugs, and a bit blighty, the Pentland Javelin were better but not great. Accent seem to have avoided most of those woes (the foliage was also still healthy when everything else was brown - they went while I was on holiday so didn't see whether it was blight or not -, and the Kestrel actually look pretty good in both respects. Two rows still in that I will have to check the list to see what they are, plus two stray Pink Fir Apple.
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I've been fairly impressed with the Sarpo potatoes I tried this year. The Kifli made excellent salad tatties and the Mira and Axona make amazing chips and mash. They also didn't succumb to the late blight that swept through all the others on our allotment site.
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We grew some Marfona for the first time this year. Sizewise not wonderful but not very many with boggits in. Cooking, I tend to cook them slowly and then turn off when almost done. I time everything round the spuds or they will go down. Mind, MArfona seems to make good mash, and the Desiree have done quite well.
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I have been reading this thread with interest, and it raises a question in my head, and that is;
There always has been a great many potato varieties to be had, but on seeing the selection of newer varieties mentioned above, the question in my mind is;
" are the newer varieties better than older varieties"
I have always been a bit of a sceptic when things like this occur, not that I necessarily see newer varieties as a bad thing, it's just I often think are they better ?
I know when I dabbled in Dahlia breeding, I found that possibly I might get around 5 or 6 plants out of a hundred plants that were worthy of growing on the following year.
Then in the second year I often found that they were not stable and quite often some reversion had taken place, thus reducing the chance of me breeding a "winner"
I often wonder if this is the same with other new plant breeds/strains?
A thought that often crosses my mind since the advent of "global warming" is; will these 'new strains' survive the test of time, or will we have to go back to growing heirloom varieties that have survived the test of time, and modify them to suit the conditions of the day?
Only time will tell I guess!
Does anyone else have any views on the subject of "new varieties"?
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Still not sure what my last two varieties are despite harvesting them last night - when I got home passata production was in full swing and by the time we'd eaten and done that, I just fell into bed. One is red - which are a bit battered, and quite scabby - and one is yellow with pink blotches. Amusingly there was one stub of the reds in the row of yellows, and a matching yellow in the same place in the row of reds. Dunno what happened there.
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"Newer Varieties" TeeGee, I am a firm supporter of Heritage varieties that have stood the test of time, with the proviso that "traditional varieties" were new once. Fellside Hero, AKA King Edwards, are showing their age now, at 100+ who wouldn't!
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Does anyone else have any views on the subject of "new varieties"?
For a period of about ten years, starting around the mid 1970s I was involved in the selective breeding programs directed at improving the genetics of the national pig herd. There were two important features that were true about this program that I think also apply to plant breeding.
Firstly it was slow. Genetic changes only occur with each new generation. For pigs this is about one generation per year. For plants you need at least one season to grow and evaluate the selected line. Possibly longer. It can take many generations to make even a modest difference.
Secondly the things the selective breeding are trying to change are often in conflict. Just one example from pig breeding. Pigs were selected for fast growth. Quick to market meant more product each year and more profit. But they were also selected for small gut volume. Gut offal is only really pet food, worth so much less than ham, chops and shoulder. But animals with smaller gut didn't grow so quickly. It was difficult to achieve both.
What we want of course is fast growing, very productive, disease and pest resistant, and superb flavour. New varieties often tick one of these boxes, sometimes two, but rarely more.
Is it worth the effort? Nationally the answer is yes. If every sugar beet delivers just a few grams more sugar, every rape plant a few extra oilseeds, every stalk of corn a few extra grams of flour the total benefit across millions of hectares is large. I fear those of us with an allotment might struggle to see much difference.
But ever hopeful, I still buy new them.
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When it comes to new potato varieties they should be stable right away as they are propagated vegetatively via tubers, so apart from to occasional mutations and diseases and stuff that will naturally accumulate they are going to be pretty much identical generation to generation.
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On finding the piece of paper, I am embarrassed to admit that my red spuds turn out to be Desiree and my yellow with pink ones (I should have recognised these, grown them most years for yonks!) are King Ted...
That's very interesting, Beersmith - I did study animal production nearly thirty years ago now, but I don't recall that balance being mentioned. It was only a one year course, and the course director was obsessed with cows, mind.
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When it comes to new potato varieties they should be stable right away as they are propagated vegetatively via tubers, so apart from to occasional mutations and diseases and stuff that will naturally accumulate they are going to be pretty much identical generation to generation.
An excellent observation. I picked a few Bramley apples today. Repeatedly grafted onto different rootstock over many years and essentially identical to the original after almost 200 years.
That said tissue culture done in the 1990s seems to have introduced small changes - slightly more compact and free branching.
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That's very interesting, Beersmith - I did study animal production nearly thirty years ago now, but I don't recall that balance being mentioned. It was only a one year course, and the course director was obsessed with cows, mind.
I may have created the wrong impression. I was not a geneticist, but was a mathematician / statistician. The whole business involved a huge amount of data processing, multivariate analysis of variance, matrix algebra etc. Inevitably some of the animal production stuff rubbed off.
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Scientific advances - whether in genetics, gene manipulation and propagation - have changed the breeding process and the transition to commercial production out of recognition. But the plant (or animal) still has to meet enough of the right criteria in the real world to be worthwhile.
There's something like 30,000 varieties of rose. A lot of the French ones bred 150 years ago remain gardenworthy. If you look at the hybrid teas / floribundas (or whatever these are now called) in the garden centre or on offer in the media, they are mostly varieties that were deservedly popular 50 years ago. Though plant breeder's rights may have something to do with that! The big developments are the strains of English / modern roses developed by David Austin, Graham Thomas and others which which produce roses that on the whole are more gardenworthy than most of the old varieties. But how many of those are really any better than the varieties they have already introduced? There's a Rose of the Year every season and I wonder how many of those have been successful sellers afterwards?
You see that most clearly with all the "fantastic new plants" on offer in the garden centres each spring and summer, in gaudy pots, mass produced and hyped up to hit the impulse buyer (guilty as charged). I bet you won't find any on sale anywhere the next year.
On the other hand, developments like surfinias are lasting because they are an improvement on petunias and meet a particular need well.
I suspect that climate change will have less effect on flowers than on vegetable breeding. Why spend time and money on adapting even a garden favourite when there are many other plants that will flourish that the public will buy instead?
Vegetables will be different, because there are fewer species and varieties in use and we are very dependent on some of them. We know that potatoes and tomatoes are being bred for resistance to blight which is difficult as blight itself mutates. If in the UK we will have more warm, wet blight-friendly summers, then we will need more of those new varieties soon (even if they are lacking in some other qualities). Runner beans and French beans are temperature / moisture sensitive too, will are current favourites suffice? And what will we do about windier weather which is predicted? Sometimes it may simply be a question of finding a related variety that grows in another part of the world in the sort of conditions we are heading for.
I'd also say that generally a good new variety of vegetable is "better" than the old varieties in general in some important way. That may be ease of commercial growing, processing and sale, such as more compact, heavier cropping plants, and it is not always taste (though that seems to be coming back in supermarket tomatoes and strawberries now). Heritage varieties are generally that for a reason - exhibit number 1 is stringy runner beans. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be preserved - the gene pool matters - but I'm not convinced they are the best thing for the family veg plot.
So I think we will soon see - and will need to see - some new varieties in our farms, allotments and gardens but that we will also grow more of some things that are less common or successful now.