[snow white]

Hi
this is the first year I have grown Sarpo Mira.  I have researched them but have found conflicting advise on when to harvest them.  Some sources say July, some August, some September and some October.  Some say if left too long they get too hard to cook properly and may go hollow, others to cut the haulms down when they go yellow and yet others say they dont go yellow until the first frost by which it is too late and they will be horrible.   
So, when do I harvest them?

 

[JimB]

Hi,

I grew them once when they came out at first,large crop of large potatoes, disgusting taste, totally uneatable.

They are grown for blight resistance not for eating.

They were a total waste of time, effort and money,never again!


Cheers!

[ARPoet]

Hi,

I grew them once when they came out at first,large crop of large potatoes, disgusting taste, totally uneatable.

They are grown for blight resistance not for eating.

They were a total waste of time, effort and money,never again!


Cheers!

When i had me lottie some of the old lads who grew them were not impressed at all.

[New shoot]

I think the best advice would be to dig one plant up and see if the potatoes are at a size that you want Snow white. 

Harvesting time will depend on when you planted them and your growing conditions.  It was a late start for most things and then too dry for a while.  It is what makes finding set times for doing things so difficult sometimes.

I've grown Sarpo Mira and while they don't boil that well, they do make good bakers, particularly if you like a baked spud with a good crunchy skin 

[lettice]

Only had about six of the Sarpo Mira variety to sow, my first time growing these. They have done fine. Seem to be taking a little longer than all the other maincrop varieties I grow in abundance, desiree, rooster and maris piper.
The leaves on the Sarpo Mira are only just starting to die back.

I always just stand in the plot and scrape the soil around the foot of a plant and see how big they are, good sign that the ones further down will be ready too. Done carefully not damaging, you can always earth up and let those ones grow further if small.
But I always do let the plants die down, cut off the tops to about 4 in above soild, leave a few weeks and then dig and store like crazy. Looks like these I will have to wait a bit longer for them to die down., but they look to be on the turn.

They look good and the size of good bakers for the few I scraped up a few days ago, they are long and very large, all 7 to 9 inch long not tasted yet.

[tosca100]

We grew Sarpo Mira this year too, but under very different conditions. We have had the hottest and dryest summer for 30 years. But because we can get our taters in earlier most of them did OK. We were going to leave the SM in the ground as it's so hot and the cellar is warm, but on reading reviews we dug up a couple of plants to see what was happening. We found that they were all of very different sizes but not a bad yield. After boiling some we found the small ones with 'set' skins were still firm where the ones with 'new' skins were OK. We had a bit of scab and a lot of blemishes so we dug them all up, left them in the sun to dry and set the skins and crated them, all except ones which had had bites taken out of them. Unfortunately after a few days they started to have rotten patches and I have had to process them all (and Nadia) so we have half a freezer of roasties (they're good...as long as you cut ALL the blemishes off.) We mashed the Nadia

I will try again next year in the hope that we will have a more normal year weather wise, but if the same happens that will be it. Just thought different conditions might be of interest. We were sold them as trouble free and indeed we did not get Colorado beetle on this variety, but we did have the scab and something (mole crickets?) taking chunks out of them and the onions

[lettice]

Well we decide to have some of the Sarpo Mira tonight with Roast Hearts and pounds of our fresh picked beans. They were roasted and some as jackets.
They were large and roasted very well, but as jackets they were excellent. Good skins.
All agreed the flavour was good.
Will look forward to digging up the rest late this or early next month.