Charlotte spuds

[Alison]

Have grown Charlottes as second earlies this year and they've done very well in a pretty much undug bed covered in card. Cooked the first load the other night and was mighty disappointed with the taste / texture, they were no where near as waxy as expected and rather more floury. Mentioned this to a friend down the road and he made the same comment. Has anybody else found this or is it a function of our soil?

FYI they were simply scrubbed clean and boiled until cooked.

[jacob]

Mine were the same. Not the texture I was expecting from a) earlier and b) charlottes. Still, they taste good, so that'll do me. It was the same with my first earlies ('orla'). Can't explain why.

[Nicos]

Interestingly mine have been floury too!
We grow them every year- and this is the first time they were like this. The seed potato was bought in France, so it's nothing to do with the supplier!
I've steamed and boiled them with and without their skins, and they were all quite powdery - and not waxy- as you said.
However-they seem to be less floury now than 4 weeks ago- esp when peeled and steamed.
Quite unusual I must say...must be something to do with the weather????

[sewer rat]

Could be the soil but I think that the really dry spell we had earlier in the year might also have something to do with it ?

[bluemoon]

Our first and second earlies went in late. All were floury and tasteless, we grew; Lady Christl, Epicure and International Kidney. We ordered them late (hence the late planting) and couldn't get any of the varieties we normally grow, so all of these were first time for us and we've been mightily disappointed. Having read this though I'm wondering if it had less to do with poor varieties and more to do with the weather. International Kidney are supposed to make a decent maincrop if you leave them so we've decided to do that, though I don't know if it will help and we already have quite a large area devoted to maincrops so don't really know if we'll get around to using the IKs even if they turn out well. All had large crop sizes though, but that's not much use if they taste horrid.

[sewer rat]

Must be the weather - Lady Christl are a superb potato - one of my faves and usually an excellent cropper too - though I couldn't get any seed locally this year

[geoff]

I've been growing Charlottes for 3 or 4 years now, on my allotment, and this year they are excellent as usual
I am a chef, and we get 10kg boxes of Charlottes from France, via the veg merchant, for salad meals. I pick out those that are too blemished or mis - shapen to serve and plant them. They are always give a good yield with no diseases
I've not been able to add as much compost or manure as I would have liked till this year, but it doesn't seem to have made much difference. I don't do any trenches or add extra compost; I just make a hole 6 to 8 inches deep with a dibber, shove in the spuds, chitted or not, cover them over, and let them get on with it

[Sue]

Hi
I had Charlottes and they've been fine, but as I was so impatient for new potatoes I did get them in very early, other people on the allotment have been complaining about various types of potato either turning to mush when cooked or "exploding" in the saucepan.

Sue

[rana]

Very interesting. I made a similar observation where I was convinced my Charlottes were not as waxy as normal and assumed it was down to the stock.

[rustylady]

All my spuds so far have been on the floury side this year. I put it down to the weather. Still taste good, but do have to be careful cooking them or they explode.

[kentvegplot]

Just tried a few of my 'Nicola', and they too are nowhere near as waxy as I would expect. Shame, but they're still tasty.

If it stops raining, job for today is to lift them all - should be really easy, as I grow them as 'no dig' potatoes :-)

[annacruachan]

My Kestrel were fine, though not many of them. Nicola produced in greater numbers and were waxy but not as tasty as the Kestrel. I shall try only Kestrel next year and be very kind to them.

[Flummery]

My Charlottes have been as good as usual. I love this spud becasue I can eat it fairly early as a small potaot in salads but I cn also leave them in (just harvesting the last few plants now) and there are some you can use for chips - and they are the sweetest chips you could imagine. I cooked some yesterday for salad - very nice, very waxy - a good flavour. I also like Lady Christl but haven't grown it this year. I wonder if it IS weather related. We haven't had the amount of rain here that most of the country had had.

Charlotte could be up for some competition next year though. After the 'Potatoes from Seed' experiment I have a couple I might be growing on as salad rivals! I've got 2 lots on my blog and one still to blog about - might do that later today. There are 2 out of the 6 I think I shall go with next year - a deep purple and a pale one. Potatoes are infinitely interesting eh?