Best potatoes and onions?

[lovelygreenleaves]

I'm new to potato and onion growing and I'll be growing in both ground and containers. Any tips on which are the best, and if possible, where you got your seeds from? My soil is sandy naturally.

[MKG]

Onions I'll leave for someone else. But we had an interesting discussion here on container-grown potatoes a while ago. If you want to virtually guarantee potatoes free from slug attack, then container-growing in compost - not soil from your garden - is the way to go. On the other hand, if you want anywhere near a decent crop, then grow them in the ground. My container-grown spuds have always been perfect - but not many of them. The only other thing I'd say is that it is (only my experience - maybe someone else will disagree) just about a complete waste of time growing new potatoes in containers (unless you're growing out of season) because the crop will be not very much more than what you planted. Maincrops have a much longer time to develop a heavier crop, and that's all I'll be growing in containers next year.

Oh, and containers are MUCH less forgiving if your watering regime isn't quite what it should be.

Mike

[Mrs Moustoir]

I recommend White Lisbon spring onions. Sow them now to eat in next year's April/May salads - they overwinter really well in containers.

This year I also grew Red Creole onions from seed and Pink Roscoff plants from the market. With the creoles - planted them in a raised bed, sowed them quite thickly and ate the first lot of thinnings like chives, later thinned more to eat as salad onions then left the rest to grow to maturity.

[grahamhobbs]

Personally I don't usually bother with autumn planted onions because spring planted types keep much longer. I usually grow both Setton and Sturon (yellow onions), both readily available, both almost identical, standard round onions, one finishes 1 week before the other (useful if you have a lot to harvest). I also grow Red Baron (red onion), probably the most common red onion. These are all good standard onions. This year with no special treatment some weighed 1lb, I grew around 250 of which only about 4 had any rot, but every year, even if wet, they do well.
I'm beginning to experiment with growing onions from seed in order to try the greater variety available, but to date they do not perform as well as those from sets (about 1/2 - 2/3 the size) and no discernible difference in taste.
Shallots can be planted in autumn and my favourite is Red Sun, nice productive (10 from 1) good size round bulb, but my wife likes the long ones (sorry forgot name) for flavour but I found they went to seed very easily.
Potatoes, the choice is enormous and is a question of finding ones you like the flavour of that suits your style of cooking. If you haven't got much space, concentrate on the earlies (new potatoes) and salad types. We get our seed potatoes from Ayletts nursery because they offer about 30 varieties and you can fill a large bag with whatever mix of varieties you want.

[dave45]

I've grown Maris Peer spuds for 2 years now in different parts of the garden (crop rotation y'know!) - they are excellent for chips (best ever!) and mash and they keep pretty well too. I got the original seed potatoes from Wilko, but last year kept the small and green ones back and used those for seeds this year.

I also tried King Edwards but they have been a dead loss both years - probably depends on the soil and summer weather !

Onions I am not too sure about - I planted in the autumn 2007 and got a reasonable crop in 2008... Spring planting in 2009 produced a crop of very small onions this year... but it could have been any other factor apart from spring/autumn planting.

[Odsox]

I'm not sure where you live Lovelygreenleaves, but here in the milder, wetter west I find that spring sown onions or sets don't ripen and therefore don't keep. I have tried everything with them, loosening the roots, virtually pulling them up even, but they just put down more roots and are still green and growing in November. Autumn sets are the only way to go here as they ripen about July when theoretically we should have suitable sunshine to ripen them.
Potatoes I grow Home Guard for earlies, purely because they have a better flavour in my opinion. Maincrop I now grow only Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona as both are pretty much immune to blight.
This year was about the worst for blight, but I didn't get any at all on the Sarpo ... Home Guard yes, tomatoes yes, but maincrop potatoes NO, and no spraying either.
Sarpo Mira is a very waxy potato, almost a salad one where Axona is very floury and makes wonderful roast potatoes.