blight resistant potatoes?

[Bigmallly]

Get yer King Ted's in CG, I've grown them for the last 2 years from self saved tatties, had brilliant crops & no blight.

[darcyvuqua]

hmmm, this spud is getting a lot of 'flack' for lack of flavour!!!!!!!!!

Yep thinking I made the wrong choice


But if I don't grow them I won't know

[Mr Bones]

There's more to the Sarpo range than the original Mira and they've come on a long way. Blue Danube are a good all rounder and make very good roasties while Kifli are a semi-waxy salad type (not too dissimilar to Anya) that also make good mash and superb wedges.
Incidentally, whilst Mira are floury they do make good oven chips and don't need coating in oil, just a skim on the oven tray to prevent sticking.

[Kirk]

Potato data base: The British Potato Variety Database
Try Serach, Advaced search and select: Resistance to late blight on tubers from the Characteristics drop down.

It gives 16 varieties:
Annabelle
Elisabeth
Gabriel
Joshua
Manhattan
Milton
Nitza
Rocket
Russet Burbank
Safiyah
Sandpiper
Smith's Comet
TX 15231
Upmarket
VR808
White Lady

If you select: "Resistance to late blight on foliage" then you get 0 results.

4 Sarpo varieties are mentioned under "S" varieties.

[Bill HH]

Yep thinking I made the wrong choice


But if I don't grow them I won't know

I am in the same boat, having lost nearly all my spuds last year i am prepared to gamble on Sarpo Mira, not so tasty is better than nothing. I am reckoning I have blight on my patch now and it will take a few blight free years before I dare go for other varieties. I even got it in the outdoor tomatoes so i shall only grow them indoors for a while.

[Kristen]

I am reckoning I have blight on my patch now and it will take a few blight free years before I dare go for other varieties.

Be vigilant roguing out any volunteers

If it is an allotment you are at the mercy of other plot holders that don't bother, of course.

[Tripmeup]

I am still using Sarpo Mira from last year (only dug some up last Saturday )
They were still in great shape, were very large and were not yet sprouting.
Not the most flavorful boiled spud ever, but boy, do they make nice chips

[Aberdeenplotter]

Sarpo Mira are a great cropper and very very resistant to blight. Couple of downsides. They are a very very late cropper and yes they do tend to be a bit bland in taste. I use them in mash a lot and add grated cheese or mustard (or both ) to perk them up

[chilli_grower]

I went for the 30 seed potato 'sarpo' collection, so now I will have a good selection, and can decide what to grow next year...

THanks for the voucher Darcy!

[Penellype]

A tip learned from one of my gardening books regarding blight. Blight starts on the leaves and the spores then drop onto the soil surface. The immediate tendency is to dig up all the potatoes as fast as possible, which then covers them in blight spores and they rot in storage. You can do 2 things which help. One is cover the soil with something like black polythene or weed suppressant material and cut slits to plant the potatoes through - the foliage will then grow through the holes. You don't need to earth up if you do this and most of the potatoes will be produced near the surface. The other thing you can do is cut off the foliage as soon as you suspect blight, and then leave the potatoes where they are for a while, either carefully removing the cover or allowing the spores to wash away down the slopes if you have earthed them up.

I grow potatoes in bags, and I have never had blight on the tubers although I have had it on the leaves (and on tomatoes) - I fold the bag tops over the soil if conditions are favourable for blight (warm and damp). I used to grow potatoes under black polythene in soil years ago and never had blight then either. Nowadays I grow Desiree as my main crop but I did grow King Edwards under polythene.

Last year I grew some sarpo axona in bags, planted in July. They stayed outside until frost was forecast, by which time the tomatoes nearby had all got blight, and were then moved into the garage. There was no sign of blight on the potato leaves at all, and I was still eating blight free potatoes, dug from their bags with the leaves left on (deliberately, to see what happened) until early March. I thought they tasted ok but not as nice as Desiree.

[Richard Eldritch]

I don't bother with main crop spuds, to much hassle with blight and slugs. Besides a king Ed is a King Ed be it store bought or home grown. Instead I've gone for Rocket, Ratte, Charlotte, Nicola in 30 ltr Pots. With any luck they'll be out by mid june and I'll squeeze my sweetcorn into the available space.

[Kristen]

Besides a king Ed is a King Ed be it store bought or home grown.

I used to think that, plus farmers have good cool storage, so can keep spuds in excellent condition into the winter ...

Then we had that dreadful summer and there was a bit of a shortage of spuds in the winter. Nothing too serious ... but it turned out that a number of the farm-shop and farm-gate supplies around here were imported. Not exactly expensive, but provenance unknown.

It seems to me (but I may be way off beam??) that chemicals such as Gramoxone, used to dessicate the haulms prior to harvest, are still used in much of the world, but have been banned in the EU for some time.

Its got me thinking that maybe I should be growing my own maincrop, even if storage is more tricky and usually they are dirt-cheap to buy, just so I know the provenance of all my vegetables.