Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: surbie100 on November 27, 2015, 09:34
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I don't grow maincrop because of blight on our site. But I find I am lifting all my spud crops in July-ish and then I have storage problems - ie no really cool space and masses of spuds at once.
Blight tends to hit our place in late August/early Sept so I was thinking of 3-4 staggered plantings of earlies to try and get fresher spuds for later storage and still avoid blight. Does this make sense?
Does anyone stagger their potato planting? And what are your results?
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I haven't tried staggering plantings, but some earlies do make decent early main crop spuds, if you leave them in.
I grow Kestrel almost every year for this. They are good second earlies, but if I already have lots of these to eat, I leave the Kestrels and they bulk up to a decent size. They can be lifted before the blight hits and store pretty well :)
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I have also done the same as New shoot but I use Orla you can dig them as first earlies or leave them to bulk up as a main crop, they also have an excellent taste and store very well, It might be worth trying an early planting and a second planting 4 weeks later.
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I've got Dunluce for next year - might try leaving some of those in longer. I tried a bit of succession planting this year with Charlottes, but they all pretty much caught up with each other.
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I've grown Dunluce these last few years. They do well if left in the ground - bulk up and retain a good flavour and texture. Maybe you could put in some first and second earlies then a few more first earlies, just to see how it goes.
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I just leave my first and second earlies in the ground until they're eaten (no decent storage at home). The foliage dies back and then I don't have to worry about blight :). Charlottes, in particular, are still fantastic in September.
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We don't bother with first earlies.
We do Charlottes, lots of them and use some small and new the others we leave until September until they are big and they store well until the following May so long as we check them and knock off any eyes.
Love the flavour of these too. Lovely new, and fabulous for boiling, mash, chips and roast potatoes.
We find Juliettes store well too.
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Planted at the usual time but didn't lift some of my Lady C until October and they were absolutely fine.
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We don't bother with first earlies.
We do Charlottes, lots of them and use some small and new the others we leave until September until they are big and they store well until the following May so long as we check them and knock off any eyes.
Love the flavour of these too. Lovely new, and fabulous for boiling, mash, chips and roast potatoes.
We find Juliettes store well too.
I found that stored Charlottes go a bit gluey by early Spring so the mash isn't great anymore. Was wondering if that was due to length of time in storage.
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We don't bother with first earlies.
We do Charlottes, lots of them and use some small and new the others we leave until September until they are big and they store well until the following May so long as we check them and knock off any eyes.
Love the flavour of these too. Lovely new, and fabulous for boiling, mash, chips and roast potatoes.
We find Juliettes store well too.
I found that stored Charlottes go a bit gluey by early Spring so the mash isn't great anymore. Was wondering if that was due to length of time in storage.
Haven't found that TBH, but thinking about it I don't often make mash as OH hates it. I usually make roasties, lyonnaise, chips of crushed potato cakes.
May be where you store the potatoes may be a little warm. We store ours in a cold garage in stainless steel dustbins.
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I've taken advantage of Johns arranged discount for Sarpo Blight Resistant Potatoes Exclusive Offer for Us
In addition to the discounted three varieties I have also purchased some Sarpo Mira. I will still be doing early in flower buckets in the greenhouse and I plan extra ini the ground or in flower buckets on the new allotment as well as the old allotment this year as I'm nearly out of potatoes just one large bag to go.