As it was raining yesterday and not the kind of weather to be working on the allotment I went to my local Blue Dimond Garden Centre and picked up my potatoes for the year:-
Two 2kg sacks of First Early potatoes Pentland Javelin which is one of the most disease resistant potatoes, that give, good crops of smooth skinned, white fleshed round potatoes & Sharp's Express - Heirloom early that has a distinctive flavour boiled or steamed. They are good for salads, roasted or chipped.
One 2kg sack of Second Early potatoes Charlotte - A highly popular French-bred seed potato, Charlotte is renowned as the salad seed potato of choice for many discerning chefs. This potato produces smooth, tender-skinned tubers with pale yellow flesh and a delightfully waxy texture.
Tasty and versatile, Charlotte potatoes excel in salads, where their wonderful new potato flavour really shines. They're also delicious when boiled, roasted, or sliced into gratins, holding their shape well when served cold or warm. Their small to medium size and consistent shape adds an elegant touch to any plate.
What sets the second early seed potato Charlotte apart is its outstanding resistance to scab and blight, ensuring a reliable harvest season after season. This disease-resistant potato has a great taste and texture and has earned it the prestigious RHS Award for Garden Merit.
To maximise your Charlotte potato harvest, it's recommend chitting prior to planting out. This process encourages seed potatoes to sprout, allowing them to establish more readily and leading to bigger crops. Simply place them in an old egg box, blunt end up, until the shoots are approximately 1 ½ to 2½ cm (½ to 1in) long.
One 2kg bag of Main Crop Desiree - This is the most popular red main crop variety, it is a proven all-rounder and can be Boiled, Baked, Mashed, Chipped & Roasted, and has drought-resistance
This will be the first year in a very long time when I have not tried to grow a new variety of potato. and gone back to basics.
With the Blue Diamond card they are reduced to 2 bags for £10 and I get to choose which bags I want where they are seed potato size and don't have a few heavy weight spuds in the nets that reduces the number of spuds in a bag. I'm also not paying for postage and packing.
A 2kg bag of seed potatoes typically contains anything form 16 to 40 tubers depending heavily on the potato variety and tuber size, with common counts ranging from 20-25 for larger seed potatoes (like Anya or Lady Christl) to 35-40 for smaller ones (like Java). Smaller, second-cropping types might yield more, while larger maincrop varieties yield fewer in the same weight, It will be interesting to find out how many are in each sack when I put them out for chitting
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