Kitchen Garden Forum

Today, on one of my occasional visits to the National Botanic Garden of Wales, I talked to the Double-walled gardener who looks after the veg. In the course of discussing the Sarpo varieties which he has been trialling these past 3 years, he mentioned that 2 years ago they had a late frost. This damaged all the varieties except Sarpo Mira. This was reported back to the 'authorities' so they planted them again last year to see what would happen. Unfortunately there were no late frosts.

This year he has a plot which he is trying to warm up a bit before planting them as early as possible to see what happens.

Also, he mentioned that he had only just, in the past few weeks, dug up last years crop - due to lack of time - and they were still edible. The other Sarpo varieties trialled there had also done well - and with good flavour.

So frost resistance is something to look out for as well as blight resistance.

The hardiness of these spuds is not to be under estimated, I grew them last year and was pleased to report that every one, and I mean everyone, had their tomato and potatoe crops decimated by blight, the h Sarpo had some small brown blight spots on the leaf and it did not spread, they stood tall through all the rain and delivered a huge crop of red skinned potatoes and they stored well over winter. We have just eaten the last of them and they were in prime condition.

I can't comment on the frost but I would not be surprised if they were good in frost also.

They truly are a super-spud!!

CoMpO

Morning Colin, i must say that makes for interesting reading.
I have not grown any of the Sarpo potatoes yet myself, but i was wondering why these potatos are not being grown commercialy on a huge scale?

Hi OH,
Red Potatoes do not have the same appeal to the general public as do whites. Shame really because they do not know what they are missing.
My family used to grow Desiree, because we liked them, and Maris Piper and the latter would be sold out months before the former. Many years we would be left with reds at the end of the season so we then only grew enough for those who wanted them apart from the family. At that time to sell reds on the open market the price was not worth the growing.
JB.

Dear Johnboy, i had never really thought about the general public choosing potatoes by the colour of their skin.
Although that does sound like most things in life, being judged by looks and not whats inside, that is.

oldherbaceous wrote:Dear Johnboy, i had never really thought about the general public choosing potatoes by the colour of their skin.
Although that does sound like most things in life, being judged by looks and not whats inside, that is.

Dear OH

Did you ever wonder why it's impossible to buy white eggs?

Apparently Americans won't buy brown eggs.

Sorry about the thread drift

Hi Alan,
Your point is relevant. Why I do not know but I would never dream of buying a white egg if there was a brown egg available. So colour certainly comes into it quite a lot. I suppose I'm as daft as the rest of the general public!
JB.