Has anyone dealt with Alan Romans for spuds?... several of us at work are about to order some potatos and he does most of what we want, the rest is little experimental 3-5 tuber things whcih we can pick up at a potato day in a couple of weeks time....
chrisc
I've bought spuds from Alan roman and they were fine , I like his selection of slightly unusual spuds
Alan Romans supplies many of the big seed companies with potatoes and I've always been pleased with the potatoes bought from him. I would recommend them and the wide range of different varieties he has are great!
I bought from there last year and was very pleased with the potatoes. I shall be buying from there again this year, (oooh, which to have???) so i guess I must recommend them :-)
He's great! Orders are always prompt, of good quality and reasonably priced. What really sold me on him was when I rang up because I couldn't remember what I'd ordered - I was expecting a call centre or at least an office, but I got his house with his wife - brilliant!
I have just ordered mine from them, had what I wanted and as I'm sharing with mates the cost is good too. I used to order from Kings as part of the allotment scheme thingy but the size of the bags and prices went up this year so I've switched to Alan Romans. Had a couple of queries and they responded very quickly
Alan is a great guy. He got his potatoes from us last week and is busy packing them in his garage now. He has to be one of the best potato enthusiasts in the UK. He always offers a great selection at good prices. If you need to ask anything regarding potatoes then you just give him a call and he will blether for ages. ;D
I've ordered from him too and would also recommend....
Not used him, but spoken to him several times at Ryton Potato days...
Welcome to A4A Heloise.... :)
If Alan Roman gets his tatties from Iain (Tattieman) then they must be good quality. ;D ;D ;D
<waves hello!!> :-)
And back to the potatoes...
Unfortunately there was a bit of a hiccup with my Alan Roman order last year. I ordered in early December but nothing arrived and it was March already. Once I got in touch he was very apologetic and got them out the next day for me. Seems they were inundated with orders because of good press and a two man team doesn't always cut it.
I do wonder how he makes a living though - if Tattieman supplies a lot of his spuds how come he charges less than him?
I've got mine from Alan Romans for years and I've never had a problem. I buy from him because he's knowledgeable, he's fairly local, he has an excellent choice of varieties and his prices are good. Also you can buy in 1 kilo quantities which suits me as I'm only growing for two and it means I can order more than one variety.
I order early autumn and they arrive December/ January. I assume he has other sources apart from Tattieman, since my seed potatoes arrived at least 2 weeks ago and are happily chitting in the spare bedroom.
Well the order frmo the three allotment holders at work has gone in..... the great thing about the 1Kg bags is that if three of you decide it sounds interesting as an experiment then yuo're looking at 4 or 5 tubers each.... given that my plot has quite short rows I can get about a kilo of spuds per row and know that it'll be about right..... now I need some wacky ones from the potato days.....
chrisc
The potato world is a complicated place. If I send Dunluce away to 5 different customers it then gets re-packed into 5 different sellers packs and a 5 different prices. The only constant is that the potatoes are all the same.
I can't undercut them all as it would be impossible to supply everyone myself.
We all have to buy in potatoes as many are protected by plant breeders rights so we are all in the same boat.
Alan is a great potato Ambasador selling potatoes at a price people can afford and I expect that next year he will sell even more which keeps me every bit as happy as I get to sell more to him. :)
I buy the majority of my seed spuds from Edwin Tuckers. The exceptions are the Mayan Gold which I buy from Mr Roman. I find him most helpful with what he supplies.
I was looking at Tuckers website before and they have a great range of specialist potatoes here http://www.tuckers-seeds.co.uk/productlist.php?catid=5&subid=278
I think Tuckers post to France aswell.
Get most of my veg seed from Alan Romans as well. Advantage (apart from being cheaper though limited options) are the smaller amounts of seed in each packet. Why pay for hunderds of seeds when I only need a couple of dozen. Lance
PS, by "Whacky" I mean more so than Salad Blue, Highland Burgundy, PFA or Vitelotte (though I did gulp a bit when I put them on the order :o)......
Going to try Setanta for a maincrop this year as it's supposed to be basically a blight-proof Rooster... plus Cara, and Valor for a big baker..... (plus the blues, purples and reds above)
To be got from the potato day
PFA, Mayan Twilight, Rocket, a few KE's and anything, that looks interesting.... thanks to Jayb I've already got a few Sarpo Axona, Blue Danube and something I've labelled up as "S.Unn".... guessing it's a Sarpo something, will have to look that one up I've got 20 feet for spuds this year so I'm hoping for ten rows at a 2 foot spacing.... my Howard Bullfinch has a potato ridger and will go down that, if I can get the 400 running then it would too.....
So half a row of Twilight, half a row of Rocket, row of PFA, two of Setanta, row of reds, row of blues, row of the current small-numbers (Vitelotte and the ones from Jayb) row of Valor, row of KE.....
Looking at it I'd expect to actually have a few Blue Salad and Highland Burgundy available for swaps.... if anyone has a few Mayan Twilight or Rocket that they'd like to exchange? Will have to wait for them to tuern up before I'm sure though....
crhisc