Kitchen Garden Forum

I was thinking of trying them next year, but the latest KG mag has just come and the report from the Scottish allotment is that of 10 varieties only the Sarpo Mir suffered from blight! Can this be true? How have others got on with the Sarpos?

The opposite applied down here Colin, out of dozens of varieties on my site, my Sarpo were the only ones that did not fall over from blight, they had a few brown splodges but the blight did not spread. I have not read my copy yet so we will see!!

Compo

Sarpo Axona are the only late potato I grow, I've lifted and stored all the rest by the beginning of August. The Sarpos are still in the ground and are fine, I've been waiting for them to start dying down before I lift them, but they are still nice and green.

We grew sarpo mira last year. The foliage stayed upright and green for ages, and the crop was huge, very large potatoes, perfect for baking. Not a hint of blight.

Same here, very happy with them. They make lovely gluey mash too, real comfort food.

I wonder if there could have been a mix up with the seed potatoes.

We have grown Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona before and have never had blight on them, though this year's Sarpo Mira were badly affected by slugs.

The mix up theory with the seed was my thought as well OH they could be desiree or something similar, I have three bulging sacks of quality spuds in my allotment shed that I hope to be still dipping into into 2009.

CoMpO

I also think that a mixup is the most likely explanation. When I grew 9 varieties I got them thoroughly mixed up!

And thomson and morgan were sending out substitutes for sarpo potato's last season, maybe our friends in skye didnt realise? i got some called verity, nothing exceptional, will get my order in early this year, as the year before i had a phenomenal crop from both sarpo mira and axona.

Hi Mandy,
What are the cooking qualities like with the Sarpo varieties? What do they actually taste like in comparison with other varieties?
I have heard some adverse comments about both varieties. These comments came from a single source and not a terribly reliable one at that.
I would value your comments.
JB.

I thought they were fine, I mainly roast and bake or curry or stew them and they just tasted like potatoes to me . But it was such a treat to have big spuds with no holes in or scab that didn't fall apart on cooking and stored well I was really pleased. For me salad potatoes are the only one's worth boiling but I don't have any particular favourites. On a thread earlier this year the flavour of thompson and morgans free offer ulster sceptre was criticised, whereas i thought they were lovely. I'm getting my Sarpo pots. from Alan Romans this year after last years problems with my T&M order. They substituted my S.Mira and the S.Axona were like pigeon eggs and came to nothing, they didnt even chit, just dried up on the windowsill.

I've just lifted my Sarpo Axona and have 45 lb from 9 tubers (I saved them from last years crop). There are only 6 with a slug hole. There are some really large tubers and a few smaller ones and they are excellent baked in their jackets and make nice substantial mash. The flesh is yellow and very filling as they have high dry matter - not watery like some.

I've selected 10 nice medium sized clean tubers for planting next year.

I might save some because I got the pigeon size ones from T&M and they didn't grow and produce as well as last year. I got blight on other potatoes but not Sarpo.I'm always careful not to compost ANY potato vegetation. I'm afraid I green bin it, but I think they heat the green waste up to such a high temperature that it would kill blight.

Is demand outstripping supply of good quality Sarpo seed potatoes? I was thinking of trying some, these posts about eating quality are reassuring but none growing seed would be a disaster - you can't catch up. Do you regular Alan Romans customers know if he operates a first come first served system, i.e. order now to secure supplies?