seed potatos and there uses your advice pls esp nev etc!!

[gunners71uk]

hi i am some what confused on our allotments people have grown picasso and use them for all baking roasting etc in the book i have on uses it does not have them down for roasting does that mean you cant roast them surely a spud is a spud ?, maincrop wise that is, i know earlies are a diffrent issue.your advice would be helpful please
regards dave

[Wombat]

G'Day Gunners,

I have grown a number of spud varieties and generally used them for what I bloody well liked, regardless of the books. I suspect that each spud has qualities that lend them towards particular uses, but i have never had one that i was dissatisifed with.

But I have't grown them all, and I must admit i am not familiar with the one you name, Dave!

Nev

[Stonehead]

Yes, you can use all potatoes for all purposes but if you want the best mash, the best chips, the best roast potatoes etc, then you need to know which varieties are best for which jobs.

Then you have to add in cropping (small amount of gourmet potatoes vs large amounts of good storers) and storage.

Picasso, which was bred from Cara, is a good to heavy cropper, that stores well, can be planted late and grows well in pots. It's a floury potato (and gets more floury the longer it's stored) so it's very good mashed. However, it's still a general purpose potato and can be used successfully for other purposes (boiling, baking, roasting, chips) but it can be a bit soggy when boiled.

My OH is now a convert to specialist potatoes and no longer thinks I'm mad to grow different varieties for roasting, baking, mashing, boiling, chipping, salads, etc. Having said that, I do have to compromise somewhat with those potatoes intended for long-term storage.

This year, we grew the following maincrops:

Milva - vast yield of very big yellow potatoes. They're waxy, boil well, and are excellent hot or cold. They have high blight and scab resistance. They store well. And when I say vast yield, I'm talking almost twice as much by weight per plant as Cara - which is a heavy cropper.

Cara - heavy yield of medium-sized white potatoes with red eyes. They're a general purpose potato with a mild flavour, can be used for most purposes (except boiling/salads) and store well. They make good chips. They're also very disease resistant.

Verity - moderate yield of medium-sized white potatoes with red eyes. A general purpose potato that is said to store well, but apparently the longer it's stored the less general purpose it becomes (turns into a good mashing and baking potato). Again, it has high disease resistance. This was the first year we grew Verity but the yield was not as good as Cara, let alone Milva.

Pentland Dell - heavy yield of large white potatoes. These are general purpose, but I use ours almost entirely for making chips. Not quite as good as King Edward for chips, but has much better blight and scab resistance, plus slug resistance.


And if you want perfect chips...

Soak the sliced potatoes in cold water for 30 minutes to remove the starch. Drain them and pat dry with a tea towel (they must be dry). Blanch them in oil at 170C for about five minutes until they just start to colour, then remove the chips. Up the heat to 190C and put the chips back in for another two or three minutes. Remove, drain and spinkle with a little salt.

If you can't fine tune the temperature, blanch the chips in boiling water for eight minutes. Remove, allow to cool and pat dry. Then fry them in very hot fat/vegetable oil for three minutes or so. But, make sure they are dry before they go in the oil!

If you want my notes on first earlies, second earlies and salad potatoes, let me know and I'll post them as well.

[Merry]

Yes please!
We had a dreadful crop of potatoes this year, very few and little, and ALL our 1st & 2nd earlies disintegrated in the cooking water.
I`ve read up on % dry matter but this seemed to bear no relation to the disintegration. They all did it.

[hedgewizard]

Yes, it's funny but my desiree did that too this year, which is unusual. We're mashing any that we boil, but it makes it difficult to do proper roasties with herbs and all.

[Cheezy]

My red Duke of York's last year couldn't bare the sight of water, and I used them as first earlies so would have thought they'd been waxy. Went for pink firs as my earlies this year to ensure I could boil them (for salads and the like. ) not a good crop this year.

However now I've got me lottie Stoney I could do with as much potato advice as possible, so your thought swould be appreciated.

[Andy Hamilton]

I thought it might be a good idea to run a potato trial starting next spring, I am in the process of writing to various different seed companies and asking them for spuds in return for free advertising. Not heard anything back from the ones I have contacted yet and might have to try a few more.

What it will mean is that we can all get a bag of differnent types of seed potatoes to try out. Hopefully 10 or so varieties each. Depending on how generous the compaines are this should only cost the postage of the potatoes to hand them out. Will let you know how I get on.

[Stonehead]

I've posted some of my potato material that I posted here plus photos on my blog (hope you don't mind the plug Andy ) but ran out of time to post the pics here. It's pretty much a rewrite of what I said earlier, but if you click on the photos you can get a large version to examine in detail (and yes, that knife probably is illegal).

I'll have to leave the info on earlies and pics until late tonight or sometime tomorrow, but will post the info here too.

[Stonehead]

As well as the main-crop potatoes, this year we also grew Pink Fir Apple (salad), Colleen (first early), Edzell Blue and Catriona (second earlies). In previous years, we tried Duke of York (first early), Maris Peer (second early), Lady Balfour (early main-crop), and Remarka, Valor, Golden Wonder and Picasso (all main-crop).

We also tried growing Champion (maincrop) from micro-plants last year.

Pink Fir Apple produced a heavy crop of mainly knobbly pink potatoes, although five plants had a mix of white and pink tubers. Despite being low in blight resistance, early picking meant they weren’t affected. They have good resistance to scab but are said to be susceptible to eel worm. They are extremely delicious and good hot or cold, especially in salads.

Colleen produced a reasonable crop of medium-sized white potatoes with creamy flesh. They are are high in blight and scab resistance, but are susceptible to eelworm. We did lose a few of these to slug damage. They are a good general purpose potato, hold together well when boiled and are also good when cold. They make reasonable but not excellent mash.

Duke of York was a failure. Almost all the plants suffered blight quite early on and all were pulled and burned. They’re described as firm, early scrapers that mature into a good floury potato. As we found, they are susceptible to blight, but they do have high scab resistance. They are susceptible to eelworm.

Edzell Blue produced a reasonable crop of medium-sized purple-blue potatoes with very white flesh. Even though they were picked early and sprayed regularly with Bordeaux Mixture, several of the plants showed early signs of blight and had to be burned. They are low in blight resistance, have some scab resistance and are susceptible to eelworm. A floury potato, they bake and mash well but they have to be eaten quickly even by first early standards. Much of our crop is becoming soft and wrinkled within six to eight weeks of being picked.

Catriona produced a reasonable crop of medium-sized white potatoes with blue eyes. Some had creamy flesh, some yellow. As with the Edzell Blues, some plants suffered from blight. Catriona is also low in blight resistance, has moderate scab resistance and is susceptible to eel worm. We also had slug damage to a small proportion of ours. We’ve found them to hold up well when cooked and they make a good general purpose potato with a good flavour.

Maris Peer produced a small crop of small, white potatoes but they were close to a line of spruce trees and this may have had an impact as the soil did dry out. The plants were by the far the best looking of all the potatoes were grown, the flavour was outstanding and they were excellent potatoes for boiling. They had moderate resistance to blight and scab, and are susceptible to eelworm.

Lady Balfour produced an average crop of medium-sized white skinned potatoes with pinkish flesh. A modern variety, they have very high blight resistance, moderate scab resistance and have some resistance to eelworm. While not particularly good as roasters/bakers, they did make good mash, boiled well and could be used in salads. However, we found the flavour to be lacking. They did not store well, lasting about four months.

Remarka is another modern variety and produced a good crop of large, white potatoes. They have high blight and scab resistance, and are partially resistant to eelworm. They’re a good general purpose potato, but the flavour wasn’t as good as some of the older varieties nor was the yield. Remarka lasted six months in storage before going soft and sprouting.

Valor, also a modern variety, produced a good crop of medium, white potatoes. They have high blight and scab resistance, and are resistant to eelworm. Another good general purpose potato, but one that doesn’t boil as well as some of the others. We found the flavour to be among the best of the modern varieties, but still a little mild. Storage was mixed, with some lasting seven months but others going soft and sprouting after five to six months.

Golden Wonder produced a small crop of russet-skinned potatoes with white flesh. We had to lift these before they were fully mature due to frosts (they were the last to be lifted in mid-October) - another two weeks would probably have resulted in a heavier crop. They are highly resistant to blight and scab, but susceptible to eelworm. The flavour is very intense and they made excellent mash, chips and roasters.

Picasso produced a huge crop of creamy potatoes with pink eyes and streaks. While they are blight and scab resistant, ours seemed to attract every slug for miles - despite our otherwise effective use of nematodes for slug control. Picasso can be planted late and grows well in pots, which might be a way of keeping them away from slugs. It’s a floury potato (and we found became more floury the longer it’s stored) and was very good mashed. However, it’s still a general purpose potato and can be used successfully for baking, roasting and chips but it can be a bit soggy when boiled. They stored extremely well - lasting seven months

Champion was an interesting experiment. The idea is that you plant the micro-plants, get a small to medium crop, eat some and keep enough seed potatoes to plant a good crop in the second year. It did not work out like that for us. Our five plants produced an average of four small to medium-sized potatoes each, with deep eyes, white skin tinted with blue and extraordinary yellow flesh. The taste was superb, with a strong nuttiness that we thought delicious. Disease resistance is said to be good. They would probably have done better with a much longer season, but with late delivery (June) and hence planting, then early lifting as we live so far north they were not a success.

Bearing in mind our local conditions, we’ll continue growing Pink Fir Apple and Colleen, while continuing our search for a more reliable second early.

Most of the modern main-crop potatoes proved up to their marketing as disease resistant but the flavours were usually too mild for our palates. We’ll probably continue with Milva due to the very heavy yield, but it depends on how well they store.

Otherwise, we’ll continue with Cara and Pentland Dell while trying other main-crop varieties as well - looking for disease resistant varieties with heavy yields, that store well and have a good flavour.

(Pics over on my blog, with a few more to come once the batteries are recharged.)

[ina]

Just to confirm - I grew Milva, too, and yes, a good crop, no blight, and excellent flavour. Unfortunately, the cows in the field next to the garden also liked them - (leaned over the fence, pulled out the green and the tubers before they started dying back), and the slugs had a field day in them, too. Still the nicest variety of all I've grown so far. (Well, Pink Fir Apple is a different class, of course.)

And I use the largest ones for baking, the middle sized ones for mashing and roasting, and the smallest for new potatoes!