Potato Harvest: Was It Worth It?

[bluemoon]

Our potato crop has been carp! First and Second Earlies boiled into mush at the merest hint of heat, the early maincrop was almost non-existent and tasted 'weird' and the late maincrop, I have just discovered, are the same. I bought the seed potatoes from a different supplier to the one I normally use and, because I ordered late, non of my usual varieties were available so I had to buy different ones. Could this be the reason? The varieties I usually buy I'm pretty confident will do well. Are some suppliers 'worse' than others? Or has it just been a bad year for spuds?
From a purely financial point of view I spent £40 on seed potatoes and have had about £3 worth of spuds in return. Normally my maincrops last well into February and I never have to buy a 'new' potato in summer. I'm really disappointed.
The varieties I used were; Lady Christl, Epicure, International Kidney, Piccaso and Golden Wonder. Surely they can't all be poor doers?

[SarzWix]

Our 1st and 2nd earlies all had a very poor yield this year, but I put that down to the fact that they were in containers and I wasn't fit to water them as much as they needed. The maincrops (Sarpo Axona & Mira, and Desiree) were a bit better, but I'm not sure if that's because of the sheer quantity of them we planted! The task of digging them up was huge, and I would have liked a bigger return for it - what we have may last a month, but probably no longer. I wonder if it was the weather again? Rain at the wrong time? And maybe all the rain last year affected the quality of the seed potatoes?

[Comfreyfan]

I grew Lady Christl - and despite blight in the haulms of the plants left in the ground the yield was fine and the potatoes were clean and white but I found the skins tough, they are keeping well though, grew very large and roast well when peeled! But they didn't grab me with a really good 'new potato' taste when small.

I can't remember which variety it was but a fellow grape this year was unhappy with the first earlies until they tried steaming them, which really improved them.

I normally grow Pink Fir Apple as a salad potato but find cleaning them tedious, so went for Harlequin this year, the seed is more expensive, but the results were good (again despite blight in the tops which I cut down before it got to the actual crop) and I'll grow it again.

But I know a few people who have been disappointed this year - it always depends on your local conditions - I think we were lucky and had a mix of sunshine and rain - quite a lot of both during the growing time!

[snuffer]

Yields have been very good this year but taste and texture have been a dissapointment with some varieties.

Swift cropped well and cooked well. Desiree the same. However, International kidney have not been holding together well during cooking and neither have the Cara.

I have often grown international kidney in my garden at home and have never had any problems with them. This year I grew them on the lottie. I was wondering if the different conditions had affected the taste and cooking qualities. The only thing different this year was location.

Next year Swift and Desiree will be on the list again but I think I'll replace the others with Pink Fir Apple. Not such a heavy cropper but good on taste with a firm yellowy flesh.

[Two_Sheds]

Steaming salad potatoes is better than boiling, but it takes about 30 mins or so.

As to yield: all the spuds on my new plot were awful... really scabby (and the ones I just dug up all have animals inside them).

The spuds on my old plot were all lovely ... no scab, no damage. The ground has been improved with garden compost and the spuds were mulched with grass clippings and comfrey leaves.

Hopefully I can find a source of grass clippings next year for my new plot, if I'm to keep scab at bay: even the so-called resistant varieties (Druid, King Eddie) aren't.

[Two_Sheds]

I normally grow Pink Fir Apple as a salad potato but find cleaning them tedious,

I snap off the nobbly bits first, then scrub everything with a nail brush ... doesn't take too long.
Mulching them with grass clippings instead of earthing them up helps to keep them clean too

[Snadger]

No complaints.........good tasty crops here!

[coreopsis]

I'm not going to grow Pink Fir Apples-I haven't got much space and I was warned that yield is not overwhelming but taste is good.Well,they are good but I must say Desirees suit me better.They are absolutely fabulous to me (except from salads).Definitely Desiree next year,as for the other variety(salad ones)-don't know yet.
Was it worth-of course it was,even just for a sake of "been there,done that".But nothing compares to your home grown spuds

[zazen999]

No complaints; one variety has gone a bit soft earlier than expected but we just used those up first.

Our best by far; were Kestrel and Amorosa.

Mayan Gold were the ones that went soft too fast.

Sarpo Mira were great with the blight [didn't get it] and we left them in the ground for ages; but tasted rough.

Desiree again were good but slugged and for the life of me I can't remember what the other type was but hey ho.

We're sticking to just growing Kestrel and Amorosa next year. For earlies; the kestrel grow so well that we just furtle for small earlies and leave the plants there.

[gojiberry]

I think it is a case of finding the right potato for your patch. Every year I grow charlotte and at least two others. And every year the charlotte do exceptionally well and the others are rubbish. Every year at this time I say I'm not growing anything except charlotte next year. We shall see if I keep to my word. The rocket and lady crystal both were full of worm and unusable. The charlotte should last till xmas.

Ian

[pigletwillie]

After 3 years of growing main crop varieties in the ground, with very little return, this year I planted "desiree" into a 13' x 5' raised bed and harvested 2 full potato sacks from it plus a few extras. They were of superb quality and in the main, huge.

From now on its raised beds for me.

[Keith2202]

A lady at my allotment gave me some Picasso. I had to dig them up and she had stacks of them, pretty big and the few I have eaten so far tasted good. I got a carrier bag full and she claimed that they would have just come from a couple of plants.

My own crops of various types have tasted good but haven't been heavy yielders. Although I think this may have been partly down to lack of water, as they were mainly container grown at home.

[tattieman]

It has been a poor year for growing large quality crops but potatoes should be easy to grow in most conditions. I think preperation is the key. We apply sulphate of potash 2 months before we plant the potatoes and we work it into the soil. This allows the potash to be more available to the potatoes when they are planted.
The sulphur helps to raise acidity and prevent scab.
We apply the nitrogen and phosphastes at the same level underneath the potatoes and this gives the potatoes plenty of feeding during hard times.
Once the potatoes are through the surface, if they are struggling we apply liquid fertilizer at a rate of 1 litre to 1000litres of water. You can probably use things like maxicrop or similar.
The best way I have found to grow potatoes is in plastic bags in the ground.
You could make up a mix of 50% peat and clean soil to reduce the cost and add 16oz of good fertilizer per 100litres of your mix. I also add 12oz of calcified sea weed to that mix.
The bags are then placed into a shallow trench that has the same fertilizer scatterd on the bottom of the trench before the bags are placed on top.
You can now simply pick a bag when ever you need some and it is so easy.
The field results have been around 17tonnes per acre of seed and in my 17litre plastic bags I enjoyed an average of 4lbs of potatoes per bag which just had one seed potato in.
I would never grow potatoes in the ground again after the results I get in the plastic bags.
I have videos of what I have been doing on youtube.
Now that you know all my secrets you can prepare for next year.
I should also say that I spray for blight every 7-10 days when I get advanced warning from blight watch.

[bluemoon]

Thanks everyone. Not just me then? We always steam our potatoes so it wasn't the cooking. Thinking about it though all the varieties we normally grow we've discovered after many years of trial and error, so it could just be the ones we grew this year were simply wrong for our conditions. I would have expected at least one to have done OK though. Next year I'll order earlier, get the varieties I want and take some of Tattieman's advice. We have two plots, each split into 4 beds and a bed of potatoes on both, so that's technically half an allotment devoted to spuds, it's a real disappointment when it all goes pear-shaped.
I had said I'd never grow potatoes again, but it looks like I'll be having another go.

[kieren]

I have had a very good yield from my spuds but I had to water them loads, I think that mst be the reason as its been very dry here.