Kitchen Garden Forum

Last year we grew 1st, 2nd and main crop potatoes. The best were Lady Crystal (1st I think) I would like to grow another 1st or 2nd early which is easy, disease resistant and most of all tasty. Any suggestions please to help me decide.

Hello Catherine
The Potato Council website would be a good place to start your search:

http://www.lovepotatoes.co.uk/the-potat ... varieties/

Much depends on how you like your potatoes. DW won't do chips so my choice is usually Maris Bard (wonderful early), Charlotte (2nd early - excellent waxy salad type) and then Desiree (main - good all rounder and roasts well). Never had many problems with any of these.
I suspect though that every reply you get will have different choices!

John

Thanks John I will start there.

Charlotte & Nicola are both good.
Foliage usually dies off before blight arrives here, you get some decent sized spuds and they keep fairly well, plus fairly resistant to other troubles.

I'm on heavy clay.

Thanks Peter, although we have raised beds we have a very very wet plot. We had to put drains in a couple of years ago and have to be careful which bed we put the potatoes in as some are wetter than others and they don't thrive.

The thing about the taste of potatoes is that it is quite dependent on soil type and growing conditions. What works for one person will be a disaster for another.

Having said that my fave first early is Lady Christl and I also think that Charlotte is hard to beat. Another excellent second early is Kestrel which can be left to bulk up and stores well.

Catherine,
I am glad that you have decided to take John's advice and hope that you decide to grow Maris Bard. To me they a the King of the Earlies and several years back I only managed to dig a few and then suffered a slipped disc so when I finally managed to dig them was the end of October and 'oh my' what a wonderful crop we had!
Potatoes that were equal to Maris Piper or even better. They chipped, boiled, roasted, baked and mashed beautifully.
I now grow far more than I can eat as earlies and just let them mature a little then carry on digging until they are all gone. I only grow the one variety usually although, health permitting, I am growing some Sarpo varieties this year to trial for taste and anti-blight properties.
JB.

Morning everyone

We have grown Sarpo Mira for the last few years for their blight resistance which is excellent, but we usually mash our potatoes and they do make a very very sticky mash We will probably try something else this year.

Lady Christl are tops

As mentioned early it's difficult to recommend potato varieties as soil and conditions affect the performance and taste so much. We only grow earlies and early maincrop - this way if blight strikes we usually manage a good crop as the tubers have grown to maturity.

We grow a mixed bag too in the hope that whatever the weather we will have at least some varieties that do well. Last year despite the dry conditions all the potatoes grown cropped really well.

We also grow Nicola and Charlotte and have for a while now and been pleased with the results. Last year Winston did well both in bags and planted in open ground

I had forgotten about Winston. I have grown it in the past and it is an excellent baking spud. It matures early and can be lifted from the ground and baked straight away.

John

As said growing conditions, soil, weather all influence flavour, but Charlotte is certainly one that I put at the top of my list. If you look on Alan Romans site he has a good selection and this year is selling in counted bags, 10, 20 and 60, which is very useful for calculating rows.

I grew the first early Dunluce many years ago. Only got a few lovely tasting spuds as the slugs also loved the foliage. Might give it another go this year.

The under gardener (her description) loved the Sarpo Mira we grew last year, so they will get a second chance. Otherwise we have tried out different varieties each year, there is so much choice that I doubt we will ever work our way through them all.
We do work to the following systemm, an early and two different main crop, looking for different properties from these (floury/waxy, bakers/boilers, large/small tubers red skin/not).
We plant a row of each, so not all the earlies get lifted and eaten whilst they can realy be described as earlies, so "growing on" is one of the qualities we like.
This season, I hope to get the earlies in earlier, to try a increase the separation between the crops.