Allotments 4 All

Sampled these early but there was little there.

Today....well, 3 1/2 inches so far!

Nice pic, Tim. The Red Duke of York were our first crop - and after a spot of blight last month! - we dug out two plants at the w/e: The tubers were all fine, firm and perfectly formed and cooked very nicely. The yield was disappointing, though: on the whole, the tubers were rather small and there were very few of them.
Or perhaps we were spoiled rotten last year with a bumper crop (different area, further south and drier).
Yesterday we dug 3 plants of Ulster Sceptre, which were also rather low on yield, but were very tasty and most tubers were in good shape, but various sizes. The blight doesn't seem to have affected them too much, thank goodness!
Looking forward to Salad Blue and Edzell Blue next...

Blight already?

I dug up a couple of Red Duke of York Plants the other day. Yield was about 350g (less than 3 lb) for two plants.  That seems pretty poor to me, but I am a new grower. Is that about par for the course?

Tim - we had blight about 3 weeks ago, and no-one was prepared for it that early. Mind you, we had the ideal weather for it in JUne in South Wilts: wet wet wet and warmish. Had to spray the usual stuff, and it seemed to work, but it was disappointing as we were hoping to go organic.
Paul - our spud growing experience is a few years short, but we always got at least 500 gms  (half a kilo) from one plant, no matter what variety - admittedly this was in Sussex.
This year, 2 - 3 plants were just about giving this amount (1/2 kilo) in weight. The plants didn't reach the size we were used to either. We thought the early spot of blight might have affected the crop, but we also had severe frosts (in Wiltshire!) until the beginning of May and as this weather freaks me out, it might well have stunted growth in the spuds. All our neighbours report below-average yields so far for potatoes.

Yield?  I'm quite happy with 1200g for a first early. More into the row they may be better than that.

Sorry about the blight, Alien - I really want a blight free year.

Quote from: tim on July 04, 2008, 05:58:57
Yield?  I'm quite happy with 1200g for a first early. More into the row they may be better than that.

Sorry about the blight, Alien - I really want a blight free year.

The pathetic yield from the couple of plants I've dug up so far may be partly because they are at the end of a row and look smaller than the rest.  There could be a lot more further in. Let's hope so. We certainly haven't had any blight problems this year.

Quote from: Paul Long on July 04, 2008, 07:43:44

Quote from: tim on July 04, 2008, 05:58:57
Yield?  I'm quite happy with 1200g for a first early. More into the row they may be better than that.

Sorry about the blight, Alien - I really want a blight free year.

The pathetic yield from the couple of plants I've dug up so far may be partly because they are at the end of a row and look smaller than the rest.  There could be a lot more further in. Let's hope so. We certainly haven't had any blight problems this year.

I dug up all my remaining Red Duke of York today (except those growing in tubs) and the average yield per plant is 700g. Not as bad as I'd feared but not as good as I had hoped. This part of my plot had not been dug for several years before I gave it a good going over last autumn, so that may be part of the explanation. However, others on my allotment site who have been growing this variety for years say they have had poor yields too.  I'll post a photograph in due course.

All my tubs got early blight but the ground ones escaped...  ??? I'm about ready to dig up some earlies, either red dukes or epicure..  :)