Homegrown potato taste

[Green gardener]

Hi,

Does anyone know if any potatos you plant yourself and grow taste more or less the same? For example: the potatos we have grown, we don't know what they are, as they were already in the ground when we took over the allottment, were absolutely delicious tasting, quite sweet with a yellow appearance (when cooked). As we have eaten the last of these lovely potatos, could we get the same flavour if we say got a shop bought one and put it in the ground? Basically, what I'm trying to ask is: Is it how you grow them that gives them the flavour, or is it down to the variety?

It is our first ever time of growing food....can't you guess?

[Lesley Jay]

I find they taste slightly different each year. It is down to the ground, the sun, the rain, watering etc.. At least thats what I think.

[bootie]

I am new to veg gardening and I planted earlies and maincrop. The earlies, Anya tasted much the same as Sainsbury's I also planted Adora but I was disapointed with the taste. My maincrop are still in the ground.

[SueA]

Hi Green Gardener & Bootie, I think that most early potatoes have a similar lovely fresh new potato taste but some have a different texture. It does vary from variety to variety & some cook better than others & it does also depend on the ground you grow them in, the weather etc. You can grow from shop bought potatoes & they will taste the same but suppliers advise you not to do this because you can't always be sure the tubers are disease free (worth a try if you're just starting out though!). Some garden centres have small packs with just 5 or 6 seed potatoes in around the beginning of the year for about 99p-£1-99 so that you can try a few different varieties to see which one you like best.

[snohare]

Gg, there are lots of water soluble vitamins and other molecules in fresh potatoes that will break down as the potatoes dehydrate after being harvested. Even kept in a fridge they will age. So freshly picked potatoes eaten the same or the next day should definitely taste different from shop-bought ones that are not so fresh. But some folks are "super tasters" - have extra taste buds and are more sensitive to such things - while others are the opposite like me, and would hardly notice sometimes.
So yes, maybe, or maybe not. Certainly, some varieties that are grown for their keeping or cooking qualities, don't taste so good, while some older heritage varieties are renowned for flavour but out of favour for commercial reasons.
Organically grown vegetables supposedly taste better, because to ingest and break down the nutrients from the soil requires a whole lot more genes switching on and chemicals being produced within the plant before it can grow, unlike conventional crops which when surrounded by a soup of dissolved basic chemical nutrients simply suck them in by osmosis. Kind of like the difference between photographing a car...and building a replica.

[blackkitty]

I grow most of my potatoes from supermarket spuds, mainly because I keep finding forgotten ones in the bottom of bags. I grow them in tubs, that way if they do get diseased ( a risk with using bought spuds) its contained and no problem. The results are variable, I've just harvested nearly a full collander of mostly good size spuds from one tuber in a morrisons bucket but I got hardly any from four spuds in a compost bag. I do find that they taste much better than the supermarket spuds, probably because we eat them within a day or two. As other grapes have said its down to lots of different factors.
You can actually grow reasonable spuds by planting your potato peelings, great if you have children or are feeling really mean.

[leona]

i actually didnt like the first earlies i had, they had a horrible after taste so we binned them. they were edzell blue

[nick the grief]

Hi,

.....As we have eaten the last of these lovely potatos, could we get the same flavour if we say got a shop bought one and put it in the ground? Basically, what I'm trying to ask is: Is it how you grow them that gives them the flavour, or is it down to the variety? .....

I'd like to think it was the way I grew them but I suspect that God & Mother Nature do more than me

Apart from the answers that you've already been given about nutrients etc another big factor is the fact that they are dug & eaten so quickly & not kicked around some process & packing plant & transported I don't know how many times.

If you are particularly interested in growing the one that you had this time why not ask the site secretary would mind if you had the phone number of the previous incumbent or ask your neighbours if they know which varieties were planted.

[Alice]

I think different varieties of potatoe definately taste different and have different cooking qualities.It's horses for courses.

[nick the grief]

or horses for main courses in this case

[bramble]

Or different soils in different areas and different types of fertilisers or not ,as the case may be , or watering or not, or you can go on, and on , and on.