Seed potatoes...how many should I order?

[royboy]

Hello everyone...
Im new to this wonderful site and a first timer at veg growing. Ive just made up 4 x (4ft x 15ft) beds and would be grateful of any hints on how many kg of seed potatoes to buy. Also what type of earlies, maincrop, second earlies etc to choose.

Please help
royboy

[Snadger]

Hi Royboy and welcome to the vine!

If I was you I'd go to one of your beds and put indentations with a dibber at the proposed positioning of spuds. I'ts an easy matter then to count them up. Go to a garden centre and do a rough count of how many seed spuds you get in a pack and you should be able to work it out from there.

As far as varieties it's up to personal taste and whether you wish to store any? It's only really the maincrops which store ok, but the first early potatoes from the garden are something to relish!

Loads of info on the vine about varieties so have a good read through that!

Enjoy your spuds!

[Nicos]

Hmm... 2 rows of 20 per bed I would say as a rough estimate- difficult to says as earlies can be planted nearer than late.

The earlies tend to be smaller, so you get more to a pack( per kilo)

Check out what sized bags you have the choice of and try and do a rough count of how many there are in each bag.

- I always end up buying too many and have to give them to neighbours kids to try and grow and stick them in tubs in my garden!!

I tend to grow earlies ( charlotte) to try and avoid blight so I'm not too good talking about mains etc.

Oh ...and welcome to the Vine!!

[Two_Sheds]

We usually look at the space we have, and then work out how many plants we need to fill that bit of ground.
Contrarily, I try to work out what I will eat, then buy seed/plants accordingly. No point growing more than you can eat.
If you sow to suit the ground you have on the other hand, you'll possibly end up with a glut. Some of our old boys plant a full row of, say, runner beans, because that's the way they always did it, and every year they end up giving bagfulls away.

[veg4681]

Hello everyone...
Im new to this wonderful site and a first timer at veg growing. Ive just made up 4 x (4ft x 15ft) beds and would be grateful of any hints on how many kg of seed potatoes to buy. Also what type of earlies, maincrop, second earlies etc to choose.

Please help
royboy

Just to say welcome to the vine although potato's not my speciality as I'm growing this year too but I've had a lots of wonderful and useful advice and tips from the forum.

Things are a little easier for me as I'm growing in pots. Does it help that 1kg potato roughly gives you about 12-13 seed potatoes? Some seed potatoes can also be sold as 10 tubers per bag if it makes bed space calculation any easier.

As for potato choice, do you have particular taste preference as in floury or waxy potato, salad or general purpose or roasting etc. To help me choose my potatoes, I just roughly read through each potato descriptions from each cropping groups online (see Alan Romans & T&M etc). I noted the ones I liked but then end up buying potatoes that I was able to buy from shops (Wilko) to do away with hefty P&P from online/catalogue suppliers. They weren't my number 1 choice but they were ones I knew I had liked. It may be worthwhile remembering that 'earlies' potatoes are useful for avoiding blight but as Snagder's pointed out they don't store well as the Maincrop.

[royboy]

Thanks for all your comments...I will try the earlies as snadger says.
Should be able to work out how many I need now. Cheers