Tesco tatties

[Thelma Sanders]

I know one year, I lost about half my Charlotte plants to blackleg (none of the other varieties got it) I'd never had it before, and not had it since..................so assume it came in with the seed potatoes.

[Alison]

That's one of the reasons that I don't grow maincrop any more - in this instance they can do it better

I think it depends on the reasons why we are grow. Obviously taste should always come into it but I also grow to reduce my food miles and use of pesticides which I can only really guarantee by growing my own. I never spray and no doubt at some point it will come back to bite me (quite possibly this year) but would rather take that risk and then my second choice will be to buy locally but I do appreciate it that not everybody has the same choices.

[brownfingers]

I'm going to do less spuds this year and more stuff which is more expensive to buy. I get my tayties really cheap from a farm shop. 99p for 5 kilos; even cheaper by the sack. They always sell Shannon. I've been using these all last year and they are really good at everything, chipping, boiling, roasting and pinging. I saved some last year to put in to grow myself and they have wonderful stubby greeny, purple chits. The other spuds I'm doing are Kestrel which I always save from the previous year. Again, text book stubby purple chits. I know the rule book says not to, but these are 4th generation. I've always had super crops from them, never any blight or blackleg, so I see no reason to change.

[Kirk]

For small amounts it tends to be a reasonable idea to use supermarket sourced items. I grow in containers and will use say 4 PFA or Anya in a container.

Cannot locate the exact text at present on the website I have a bookmark for but seed potato's are allowed to be sold with a certain level of disease resident to them. So if the thought is seed ones will have no disease then you're wrong, it is allowed. However supermarket items being for the human food chain likey have a higher control. Also the supermarkets do not want a batch of diseased spuds appearing. They lose profit and the buyer loses their job.

The potato's I have planted have all been good, equally so have the seed ones from poundland etc. Visited a GC last week and their seed potato's were £3.99 for 10. That's 40p each, so pushing a supermarket one under to soil makes some sense.

Usually a good idea to pick a UK variety. That's a good idea for anything - best garlics I have came off the local market and were grown 20 miles from me. Those cloves are doing great.

[Thelma Sanders]

However supermarket items being for the human food chain likey have a higher control.

I don't think that's true, they are tested for eating quality only, not for potato diseases, as the diseases aren't harmful to humans. They just remove the squashy/horrid looking ones

[maverick451]

Im wondering whether the seed potato business is a little bit of a con.

Jersey potatoes are never grown from seed potatoes, they always use last years stuff.

[Kristen]

I also grow to reduce my food miles and use of pesticides which I can only really guarantee by growing my own. I never spray and no doubt at some point it will come back to bite me (quite possibly this year) but would rather take that risk and then my second choice will be to buy locally

Snap. I stopped growing Main Crop because easy to buy locally and farmers have great cool storage facilities ... then one year it was a wet summer, local harvest failed, and the ones I was buying at Farm Gate turned out to be imported. No telling if Gramoxone or somesuch had been used on them to dessicate the foliage (now banned in EU, but not elsewhere) ... so I'm back to growing main crop again.

Im wondering whether the seed potato business is a little bit of a con.

Jersey potatoes are never grown from seed potatoes, they always use last years stuff.

They grow their seed potatoes separately (to the crop) and under controlled conditions (from memory on the North side of the Island). That said, its an island, so minimal chance of disease arriving - bit like Seed Potatoes being grown in Scotland as few bugs bothering to make the journey up there ... they can also resort to tissue culture to clean up any viruses, if they get infected.

Cannot locate the exact text at present on the website I have a bookmark for but seed potato's are allowed to be sold with a certain level of disease resident to them.

That's correct, but I think only because its not possible to test every single one, so they test X% and provided that the disease level is below a (low) level then the certification is provided. The fact that some virused ones are allowed doesn't automatically mean that there are some diseased ones though , and if the level is low then the next generation will be plenty good enough but ... save potatoes from that, repeatedly, and the virus levels will increase to the point where the crop is impaired. Using supermarket spuds, instead of certified stock, means that you are already at least one generation down the chain. I am doubting that makes a ha'porth of difference ... but I don't know what the statistics actually are.

supermarket items being for the human food chain likey have a higher control

That's not the case for viruses in Potatoes, they cause no harm to people, just to the production of the crop. I worked in a tissue culture lab on a nursery that produced virus-free plants (flowers mostly, but Strawberries too). They used tissue culture to eradicate the viruses ... the resulting plants were phenomenal. Huge strawberries, vivid flowers that lasted much longer in water ... and best of all they were rapidly reinfected with viruses in a few years, so the grower had to re-buy fresh stock plants - great business model

[Snadger]

The farm I worked at used to buy new stock every two years.(Pentland Crown if I remember rightly?)They bought and planted certified seed, harvested tatties and I spent many a winter riddling the dam things.
Three piles, one for eating,one for seed tatties and the rest for pig tatties. Used the seed tatties for one extra year then bought in certified stock again.
The only way you can guarantee having virus free stock is to grow real potato seed from tattie apples.
Tatties grown in Scotland are less prone to virus but in a warm summer when lots of aphids are about they surely can't be guaranteed to be virus free.

[Potstubsdustbins]

^^^^^^^^^^^ Blooming heck there is more flying insect life in Scotland than you can shake a stick at. The place is renown for it, if you go on the hills it is usual to wear a face veil.