Potatoes information needed

[Catherine]

We bought our potatoes on Saturday. We chose Epicure for first early and Desiree for main crop. Can anyone tell me if they have had success with these as we have never grown these two before and I did not have the chance to ask before we bought. We wanted a good potato to store for the winter and we have not done that before either. Can anyone tell me when I should be starting to chit these as I said we have not done main crop before. (I buy Desiree for use in my cooking and like the potato in general.)

[jethrotattydrill]

Hello Catherine
I would suggest that you can delay chitting for a few weeks yet. Keep the potatoes in a cold but frost free place and then in mid Feb set them up in trays to chit. It is not too important for Desiree as they are your main crop mbut it would be beneficial for Epicure as they are a first early.
Epicure is said to have some resistance to frost so make an early start withnthem. Desiree is your main crop and is a good all-rounder. Some slug and scab resistance and a good cropper normally. Good luck

[Cider Boys]

Hello Catherine

I agree with jethrotattydrill advice and have grown potatoes on a small scale for some time but have left the work to my eldest son for the last few years. We have always grown desiree and have saved our own seed each year and used certified seed after the fifth year. The desiree potato has given us good results and we had many regular customers over the years. Although not affecting its eating qualities, desiree does tend to develop scab when grown on light soils, also its resistance to the blight of the last couple of years was poor. However recent years have been very bad for blight. Last year I grew a few Lady Balfour on light soil on my allotment and they faired better than the desiree regarding blight. The last couple of years have been very wet and we were late lifting the crop on a heavy clay soil and it suffered very badly from slug damage, so we are going to change.

This year we are thinking of growing Sante which is a second early; has anyone grown these before?

Catherine, I'm sure that your desiree will taste lovely and I wish you all the very best with them. They are one of the very best all round potatoes and keep well and I'm sorry that we are changing.

We are also growing our favourites, Maris Bard for our new potatoes.

Whatever potato people grow, I hope that this year will be free from blight and too much wet when lifting. Also I hope this year will be better for anyone who keeps bees, beekeepers tell me that they also have had two very poor years.

Best of luck

Barney

[snooky]

Hello Catherine,
If Desiree doesn"t work out for you,then,as I did,switch to Romano a "cross"of Desiree.I have found that it has better slug and blight resistance and I have a heavier crop.

[bicci]

Hi All,
We found Cara, Maris Piper and Sarpo Mira were all very good main crop
spuds last year.(still eating them)
I was wondering about salad potatoes, I have bought some Anya,
and Charlotte, but there seems little info around about when to plant
them.Do they go in after 1st earlies or earlier?

[Catherine]

Thanks everyone for your information I wish now I had posted before I had bought, never mind there is always next year They were selling Romano but we decided to go with Deseree. The problem was that last year our potatoes were pretty good at blight resistant but we did not get very many from the plants. But we cannot find anywhere written down what we planted (how daft is that) for some reason the lables got lost in the planting.

Over the years on our plot we have lost our little white row markers. We would come to the plot after a day of planting to find all our white markers pulled out and strewn over the beds. We had eventually to plant the makers deep at the end of each row only showing very slightly over the soil, that seemed to help.