Potato advice please

[CJ0151]

Hi,

I am pretty new to vegetable gardening. Having been spectacularly unsuccessful I am now looking for help in choosing the right postatoes to plant. I would like a crop of early new potatoes and a maincrop.

I have been advised as follows:

New potatoes: Pink Fir Apple
Maincrop: Kifli (blight resistant but tasty)

If anyone has any experience of these, please could you let me know. Cheers. CJ

[scarletrunner]

ACCENT 1ST. PICASSO MAIN,are a good choice.

[alex-adam]

Hi CJ,

Pink Fir Apple are a main-crop salad potato. I haven't grown them though.

I only grow a few potatoes in large pots (about bucket size) the varieties I generally grow are Maris Peer (first early) and Charlotte (second early)

I have tried Anya but with very poor results in my pots, but friends have grown them in the open and had very nice yield. Anya are a cross between Desiree and Pink Fir Apple.

a-a

[Aberdeenplotter]

For a first early, Red Duke of York takes a bit of beating followed by lady crystl. For a maincrop I use a blight resistant variety Sarpo Mira, They are very late. I harvested the last of mine today. Tubers of one and a half pounds not unusual. Really nice mashed with grated cheese

[Pies]

For me there are too many variables to give you an answer,need more info like whats your soil like,what you want to use them for etc

Tattieman !!!!!!!!

[CJ0151]

Thanks everyone. I am interested in blight resistant potatoes as I lost a full crop to it in 2010 but have read the Sarpo Miro are very tasteless??

I live in Orkney so our harvest is a month later than what you would normally expect so any late harvesters would be no good as I would be digging up in November instead of October which is normal.

Our soil is very loose, drains very well and is a little stony. It has had a lot of manure dug into it. The Orcadian way to grow potatoes is to spread the beds overwinter with seaweed which I now do. It's free, is abundant and at my back door!) This year I survived the blight but lost a lot of plants to slugs (I think, may have been my cat!) The yield was OK but not great and the potatoes are quite small but very tasty (they are a local variety, don't know the name.)

Not sure what else you would need to know but ask away.

Many Thanks
CJ

[Pies]

I'd defo grow kestral,a second early but great spud,id try some rocket as a first early

more info here JBA - Seed Potatoes and Growing Potatoes

[FionaH]

Pink fir apple are main crop. They are also HUGE! I had more greenery than I have ever seen. I planted them without checking, thinking that as salad pots they would be second earlies, they seemed to be in the ground forever. They didn't get blight though

[snohare]

CJ, I think you need a copy of Alan Roman's Potato Book, which has a list of not all varieties of potatoes, but certainly a good many, and which tells you what disease and pest resistance each one has. So foliar blight, tuber blight, blackleg, scab, eelworm and slug resistance.
One of the points made in his book is that PFA is very prone to blight - so perhaps not the best of choices for disease resistance, although I try to grow them whenever I can because I love the taste. Of course being maincrop they are very vulnerable, I grow them in upland areas that are - supposedly - less prone to blight.
If slugs are your problem well I have found both Kestrel and RDOY to very good for that. I had a very good crop from them this year, although that was partly luck with the weather.
Blight now even this far North, is such a problem, that next year I will be using some Sarpos; I know they are often called tasteless, but that may well be down to the soil they have been grown in, and in any case I cannot afford to lose a whole crop, which is bound to happen sometime, otherwise. (I can't check my crop every day.)

[Piggle]

I usually grow Pink Fir Apple - they do produce some funny shapes though so not that good for peeling!

I've never had blight but I'm stuck in an end plot and I don't think it can be bothered making it's way down to my patch.

[snohare]

I've never had blight but I'm stuck in an end plot and I don't think it can be bothered making it's way down to my patch.

That's you hexed yourself !

<Adopts voice of Fraser from Dad's Army>
"Aye, yer doomed noo Piggle quine, doooomed Ah tell ye !"

[Alison]

PFA are well worth growing and lovely scrubbed (never even thought about peeling ) and boiled in the middle of winter as you get a new potato type taste but will keep all winter if you want. I've not found the plants any bigger than any others but they are quite late. I'll always grow some of those but also like plenty of normal spuds for mash, roasties etc. Vary what I grow but tend to pick a variety naturally blight resistant such as Orla or Romano. For earlies the best I've ever grown are Ulster Classics, really tasty and versitile and don't fall apart like so many varieties. Although as said, your soil and taste will make a difference, I think Charlottes are a waste of time but some people love them.

[Two_Sheds]

I usually grow Pink Fir Apple - they do produce some funny shapes though so not that good for peeling!

Yeah, don't even bother trying to peel them: snap off the knobbly bits then give everything a good scrub with a nail brush (his, not yours )

I love PFA, they are my fave spud bar none (a late main crop, I can still be digging them up in December)

[Piggle]

[QUOTE=Two_Sheds;903375] snap off the knobbly bits then give everything a good scrub with a nail brush (his, not yours )QUOTE]

Ouch!