Kitchen Garden Forum

Overnight I have received a number of 'offer' emails.

These are all from seed companies that I have agreed to receive email from. It is not the sending of such emails that is the subject of the post.

One such email this morning is from one of THE major, and most well known, seed companies and is promoting their seed potatoes with a offer price per kilo.
There is also their 'collection' offer.

I think you will all be impressed with this .............. NOT !!!

9 seed potatoes, 3 of each variety, for the bargain sum of £8.99, that's £1 each seed tuber. And they will be despatched from December 2015.

I buy my seed potatoes loose and pay between 10 to 15p per tuber, I usually buy around late February / March and put them out to chit.

I have noticed a change in suppliers attempts to get us to buy items that once had a distinct selling season and certainly have a season when they will grow, or if a sundry item will work.

Am I alone in thinking some are taking the proverbial with novice growers, and sometimes not just novices.

I got that one as well and couldn't believe it.
The garden centre I get my seed potatoes from has a 10% off everything sale every January (even though they are cheaper than most already) so at the end of the month I buy lots of things that last all season. This year Charlotte were £2.99 less 10% for 37 - just over 7p each - Lady Christl were more expensive at 8.5p each, even small packets of 10 Vales Sovereign and 10 Record were only 20p each.
It's the same with mail order Garlic. I usually replant my own plus add a few fresh. This year I got Marco from RHS Harlow Carr (Taylor's Bulbs) where I got 3 bulbs for £2.99 that gave me the 20 cloves I wanted to plant, plus some bits for cooking.

How long before suppliers produce a new variety for the small garden /patio / balcony grower market and name it
Solanum tuberosum Mug

Thanks Mr Snip.

I try to contain my cynicism so as not to worry folks that I'm a depressive, among others the seed companies employ marketing professionals of whom I have little experience other than their almost crooked methods relying on the expense of the legal system to us for making what would occasionally be justified claims for unfair marketing.

The point I often raised was the issue of promoting container planting when it isn't a very good method but sells to those who have little space, my view is that some plants grow nicely in containers and some are unsuited. The marketing even gets people growing apple trees in pots. Fine, but they should give professional guidance as to the suitable or unsuitable levels so purchasers can buy and not loose their plants within a year or suffer poor perfornance.

I did my own small research on this issue and in a small way could produce a guide to expected performance, potsVopen ground.

And whilst I'm at it, the costs of two garlic bulbs, are they having a laugh. Ok, I only ever bought two bulbs and the following years planting is from the previous crop so I don't spend on garlic but I would love to try other types but for the expense. Is it me ?

Well you two are lucky,

The best offer to arrive in my IN box overnight was one of those special coupon deals offering a colonic irrigation session reduced from £111 to £39 !!

To add insult to injury, when I read through the details, it advised you, in the 24 hours before the treatment to have a light diet of fruit and vegetables and to drink eight glasses of water, which is a pretty effective irrigation remedy in Itself.

I'm just recovered from colonic irrigation, someone gave me some soup they found too spicy for them. It was lovely but within two hours it had gone through and left me poorly since Thursday last week.

Rotavirus ? Rotovirus ?

It may not have been the soup but I'm big on using probability when facts desert me. (If it quacks, waddles as it walks, yellow/orange beak, it'll be a duck)

I go to a fairly local nursery who stocks some 40 different variety's and select the right amount [13 a row ] by hand.

Even more economical, I save my own, choosing medium sized tubers from the best plants. I just grow a few of six or seven different varieties and only buy new ones if the crop loses its vigour.

I bought some micro plants that Alan Romans had propagated from some old varieties quite a few years ago now and always save some of these as they aren't generally on sale, although I think he has managed to get some on sale as tubers now. My favourites from these are Orion which makes lovely creamy mash, Highland Burgundy Red, nice flavoured slightly sweet, pink mash, Salad Blue which is an amazing navy blue if you boil them whole and slice them when cold. The other from these old varieties is Forty fold which is a fairly small potato but very prolific and is very tasty with high dry matter - not watery. Then the usual Charlotte, Kestrel, Desiree and Sarpo Axona.

And as I've said before I plant them in November so they stay dormant and start growing when the weather suits them instead of trying to store them in the cellar and finding a bag of shrunken tubers with long shoots after Christmas.

That is an amazing variety of spuds you grow PP, I'm impressed. For some reason my taste in potatoes is very-very conservative so I tend to buy Maris Piper and Maris Peer though I love Anya, PFA and of course Charlotte.

It used to be King Edwards though I found then so variable and unreliable I won't buy them now.

I'm not keen on spuds that taste sweet so im scared to try new types, this year was my first crop of spuds. PFA and a few Charlotte, the PFA got hit by what I assume was blight after some heavy rain, as soon as the foliage went black I cut it off and appear to have rescued the crop though I did get a few dodgy ones that didn't appear dodgy to the inexperienced eye but they were tough after being boiled and tasted horrible.

No one has mentioned buying through their allotment association which must be the cheapest way if you have one and belong; Not all of you do I know. We pay just £1. per kilo for all varieties except the specialist ones.

Beryl.

I only just realized that we (in Fishguard) have an organization that appears to be by gardeners. I'm not aware of any allotments, how about a gardeners association ?

What I spotted on a number of occasions was a gated storage area with pallets of compost though the gates are mostly closed and locked. I think.

I'm surprised I haven't investigated further though I don't use a lot of potting material, probably four bags each season and I would be embarrassed to ask our garden centre about it.

Cheeky eh ?

PLUMPUDDING. How do you store them.

My wife bought the garlic from morrisons this time last year she split the bulbs up and planted them amongst all types of laughter and elbowing from friends down the plot, shes had the last laugh as usual as we now have more garlic than we will ever use in storage

Well it never hurts to try breaking the rules. Can anybody explain why we're told not to use supermarket garlic for planting and to buy from commercial gardening outlets. Is it because supermarket bulbs are not guaranteed disease free?

Primrose wrote:Well it never hurts to try breaking the rules. Can anybody explain why we're told not to use supermarket garlic for planting and to buy from commercial gardening outlets. Is it because supermarket bulbs are not guaranteed disease free?

That's the reason I keep hearing.
whether heat treatment comes into it as well I don't know.

What I can't equate in my mind is how we claim that stuff we grow on the plot tastes better than supermarket produce yet we try to cut what are minimal costs in most instances by using those self same supermarket varieties