EP209- What Are The Best Potato Varieties For Your Garden.

In this weeks episode John looks at what are the best potato varieties to grow from early varieties like Sharpes express, Homeguard and Duke Of York. Second earlies such as the superb British Queens. Salad potatoes like Charlotte and Pink Fir Apple.

We also chat about many main crop varieties and growing blight free varieties like Vitabella, Alouette, Sarpo Axona and Carolus.

If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
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John 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 209 of my Astronomy Garden podcast. Now this week we're looking at the best potato varieties for, as opposed to growing at home, and we've talked about potatoes on, you know, on the podcast on a few occasions. We've done a couple of in-depth ones in terms of how to plant and how to sow. Won't go into that so much today. We'll just talk about varieties and choices. And it's an interesting time because it's middle of January and, with the exception of maybe the southwest of the country, there won't be too many potatoes getting planted anytime soon, and certainly for me. Here we're looking at, you know, in the tunnel even, you're looking at kind of February time before you would plant, and outside you're probably looking at April and potentially well into April. You know, just depending on the weather and so on, soil temperature is hugely important and that really determines when you can get out and plant. You're looking for good, solid 10-12 degrees for a period of, you know, seven to 10 days before you would even think of putting potatoes into ground. You can, in a tunnel situation you can obviously put down some black plastic, heat up the ground a little bit, sort of artificially heat up the ground a little bit and that will help and it might get you started a little bit earlier and, as I say, in certain parts of the country you'll be able to you'll be able to sow and plant your potatoes that bit earlier anyway, down the southwest particular.

Speaker 1: 1:46

So variety-wise it's an interesting one. We're talking about it quite early and the reason I'm talking about it early is that there has been a lot of turbulence in seed potatoes over the last couple of years. I suppose initially Brexit caused some issues and varieties that were, I suppose, sort of readily available to the Irish Gardener were reduced quite a lot and because they're not grown commercially here and then there's no real demand, you know, in terms of volume for the seed over here, so you might have a lot of home gardeners that use, you know, a certain variety of seed, but then the crop is not grown commercially. So that means that there's no requirement for bulk seed here and hence the variety doesn't end up available in the country. Now. It took a year or two, but a lot of those varieties are kind of back now, but this year there's quite a scarcity of seed potatoes and this is again following on from the cold and wet and particularly wet time that we had last year.

Speaker 1: 2:49

So what's happening and the wet weather? What's happening basically is crops generally, the volume of harvest was down quite a lot commercially, and on top of that you're there's quite a lot of wastage. So we're typically a farmer be harvesting next amount of tonne or acre that harvest per that harvest tonnage was down. The wet means then that there's quite a lot of disease and problems with potatoes. So at the grading stage the grade off is quite a lot more. And then, because of that scarcity, the price of eating potatoes, of where potatoes, as I'm sure you've all seen. So anyone that's buying potatoes will have seen you know that they're typically priced very high at the moment versus, say, where they were 12 months ago. And because they're highly priced as a where potato, as an eating potato, that means that a lot of the of the farmers are just putting all of their potatoes into eating and keeping none back for seed, because the amount of work that's needed to produce a ton of seed potatoes is a lot higher. You have a grading process, a lot more grading. It would be two or three grades. It has to go into cold storage for a certain period of time, then you have to get it certified and that's, you know, tricky and not tricky, but it needs. It's another procedure that needs to be done. So what's happening is a lot of the stock that you know would have been maybe earmarked for seed is just sort of going off now and into and into eating potatoes, basically with the result that they're they're scarce. So that's why I wanted to talk about it quite early.

Speaker 1: 4:37

The point I'm making is that if you have intentions to grow potatoes this year, then you need to get out and get your seed as soon as you can. You'll start in some shops already. You'll see it going into more shops quite soon, and the earlier you can get it the better. You don't even need to plant the juice, you just need to keep it in a sort of cool and dark place for the next while. But have it sourced anyway, you know, particularly if there's certain varieties that you're looking for, because you might hold back for a month or six weeks and then when you go, look, they may not be there. So just if you are intending to grow potatoes, try and source your seed potatoes as soon as possible, so that, as I say, we're going to chat about the varieties now and just a sort of a really brief overview on the growing side of it.

Speaker 1: 5:28

So what you're talking about is first the earliest, which are the earliest ones that you can plant, the earliest ones that you can harvest. We're talking about second-airlies, which are slightly after that, main crops, and then salad potatoes and that's kind of the four categories and within that then you're going to choose your varieties, but basically first-airlies, you're going to plant them, all of them. You're going to plant down four inches into ground or dare abouts, and you'll mount up afterwards. Distance for first-airlies is 12 inches or 30 centimeters apart in the drill and then 45 centimeters or 18 inches between the drills. You're going to plant, typically speaking, in March, april, and you're going to harvest in June, august, typically and this is outside now, obviously you can have earlier crops from polytons. Second-airlies you're going to plant out in April and May and then same distance down, 10 centimeters or four inches. Distance between them in the drills is the same 30 centimeters and 12 inches and in between the rows again 45 centimeters and 18 inches between the rows Main crops. Slightly later you're looking at April and May for planting. Again the same depth, four inches, 10 centimeters. Distance between them within the drill is 15 inches or 37 centimeters approximately, and then between the rows you're looking at 27 inches or 67, 68 centimeters. So you're looking at quite a lot bigger spacing when you start getting up to main crops and then part of the time you're looking September, october and even into November, and then salads again is early, we're going to get them planted in March, april. Again outside you can go earlier in a polytone or in containers in a polytone and then nine inch spacing within the drills so they can go quite close together, and an 18 inch spacing or 45 centimeters between the rows.

Speaker 1: 7:36

Typically salad potatoes are generally sold, or sold and planted in containers and in polytones. That's where you see a lot of them and you're going to get a really early harvest there. Sometimes from a polytone you might get a harvest in early June, but typically outside you're going to look at a harvest in July and right through to September. So they're the kind of the four categories Within that then, and I'll just talk as well at the end about the varieties I grew and, I suppose, the final assessment after growing them this year. So all the ones I grew were like three varieties of quitted, none of which I've grown before. So just interesting to, I suppose, chat about those.

Speaker 1: 8:21

The early varieties, the usual ones, sharps Express, are really really good versatile variety. The thing with the earlys and second earlys, particularly first earlys you're going to get them into the ground and you're going to get them out of the ground before there's any blight issues. So typically you're not going to have much issue there with blight and that's why they're so popular with home gardeners. They're typically the ones you can plant in a polytone and, as I say, you'll have an early harvest before blight becomes a big issue. But to start off with Sharps Express, a really old, popular variety, very versatile, can be used for all forms of cooking. So some potatoes are suitable for maybe one or two of the ways that we eat potatoes, but not them all. But for example, sharps Express is suitable for boiling, mashing, baking, roasting, chipping. It's also really suitable for, can be suitable for salads as well, you know, for your potato salads and so on. So it's a really versatile potato, quite skinned, really really thin skin on it so that it bursts open when you cook it. And a very good potato has really low resistance to blight. But luckily enough you will have it harvested, you know, nine times out of 10 before blight becomes an issue.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Next one then is Duke of York, and there's Red Duke of York which I actually grew last year. That's kind of an old variety. Not such a big harvest from it but very, very tasty potatoes. I grew those at the polytons and they were really good. Duke of York, which is again a white skin, is again an old type variety, is an air, a really airy one as well. Again suitable for the polytol, not suitable for as many farms of cooking, so it's good for a boil, for salads, again for roasting and for chipping. So less versatile, maybe down in the Sharp's Express, but still a very, very good variety.

Speaker 1: 10:20

Sharp's Express is hugely popular down the south southwest of Ireland and Duke of York then sort of midlands over to the west. Duke of York tends to be more popular. Again, really low resistance to the blight, but you're not going to have them in the ground typically when you have blight issues. So again a really good one. Another one Home Guard, again white skinned, really nice variety, one of the most popular airy varieties, good, heavy, proper and yeah, and a good all-round airy variety to grow. Orla is another one that's an Irish variety. It's a registered Irish variety, really good airy one. Probably not as tasty, to be fair, as the Sharp's Express would be, but very, very similar, very similar in the way it's very versatile, white tin skinned and, yeah, another very, very good potato.

Speaker 1: 11:17

When it comes to secondary airy's, then I suppose the names. The biggest selling seed potato is British Queens, probably up there has been one of the most popular eating potatoes that we have in the country and one of my favourite potatoes, secondary. The issue I had with Eddyn Grode in 2023, previous year I did and went away on holidays a beautiful crop went away on holidays and came back and was covered in blight and I did get to cut off all the stalks at that stage and avoid the blight spreading down into the tubers. But the issue was that the crop was quite small. There was lots of potatoes, but they were quite small, deliciously tasty. It's definitely one of my favourite potatoes, superb for particularly steamed, really flowery and very, very popular in Ireland.

Speaker 1: 12:11

It's probably the most, I suppose, popular potato, certainly in the earlier stages of the year July, august, that sort of time frame One of the biggest sellers in terms of seed potatoes as well. So if anyone is looking to grow those. I would secure them early. Maris Pipers another one. So that's some of the maris ones that's really popular in the UK, very good for chipping, particularly good for chipping. Also useful for boiling and baking. But it's the one that a lot of the chefs will say get for making your homemade chips. So it's really good from that point of view and that's a good secondary. Then, when it comes to main crops, you see there's not so many now in the airdies and the secondary and that's because there's lots of varieties within that space but just the availability of them is a little bit less. Then, when it comes to main crops, you're back to a lot of the ones that you would recognise from all along, things like carapinx. Again, it's a variety that is quite scarce, this year particularly but it's a really good, solid variety.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Has kind of a pink guy white skin, kind of a pink guy. Has moderate but not very much life resistance. Unusual looking potato. When you take it out that name suggests it's Kers Pink, so it has a kind of a pink eye on it, a pink tinge to the skin. But a really good heavy-proper, very good for most farms of cooking, vialing, mashing, bake, roast and chip. Really good, really good potato, but seed of that is quite scarce for the year coming.

Speaker 1: 13:54

My next favourite potato behind British Queens is records. This one has kind of a again a flowery taste Potato itself. You don't tend to get really huge potatoes in it, but they're generally a good-sized potato and slightly yellowish tinge to the flesh slightly. But for me British Queens record are the two tastiest potatoes and particularly after the British Queens are sort of finished, you know, and you get into September or October, that's when the record typically comes into its own and tastes superb. It's a really good follow-on potato.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Again, I didn't grow it in 2023 because it doesn't have blight resistance at all and I just didn't want the hassle and I said I'd try the blight ones, the blight-free varieties, this year, just to give it a go and see what they come up with. Next one on the list is Golden Wonders and everyone again is familiar with those. Again, a common one for chips and a really good variety, very, very flowery. It's an old variety and particularly in Ireland it's really well-liked. It's quite late, it tends to be quite late and it is a reasonable cropper, but not a very heavy cropper. But again, a really tasty potato, very low resistance to blight.

Speaker 1: 15:21

Next one is probably the biggest selling eating potato in the country you can see it everywhere is roosters. A bit of a mixed-field on roosters personally. They make brilliant chips, they make okay sort of mash and roast but they're just not at the same level in my opinion. That say a record is or a Golden Wonder is or a British Queen is, they're okay, but they're everywhere and you do get a bit sick of them because nothing kind of special about eating them are. You know, when you get the first Queens or the first records. There's something just beautiful about those. But less so with the real store. Very good, all-round potato, no resistance or very little resistance to any blights, a little bit susceptible to scab as well, but a really really good heavy cropper and that's where it kind of comes into its own.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Obviously everyone knows that the red, the really red skin, slightly yellowish flesh and, as I say, a really really top variety. Other good varieties in main crops Satanta is one. Unfortunately very little of it available. If you're lucky enough you might see some has the look of a rooster, grows kind of similar to a rooster, tastes similar to a rooster and is very versatile. But the benefit of it versus rooster, I guess, is that it has high blight resistance, pretty good blight resistance. Another one is the Ziri. Again has some blight resistance.

Speaker 1: 16:57

Again, a red skin potato. It's reasonable, it's pretty good, but not of the same level as Satante. It doesn't look dissimilar to Satante. Other varieties then you're looking at there's ones like Kelly, which is a very heavy cropper. It's a white skin potato, very heavy cropper. That one would have come from sort of the chipping industry. So that tends to mean that it's going to be a heavy cropper. It's tasty enough, it's not. It wouldn't be at the same level as the old favorites, but it's a reasonable potato. Yeah, what other ones have we? King Edward is another one that we have. Don't particularly like that one, the self Nice, attractive looking, not dissimilar to the carapinks, except that the potato itself is a little bit bigger, a bit more elongated. But a nice potato, very versatile, heavy cropper, particularly heavy cropper, actually no resistance plate whatsoever, but again, a good variety, very, very popular in the UK, less so here, but it is a good potato. And that's kind of the list of main crops that you'll see.

Speaker 1: 18:11

There's a couple of very useful, I suppose what we call salad potatoes that are good. I've grown Charlotte before. I've grown them in containers before. I've grown them in the tunnel before. Really good cropper and a really nice potato early, particularly, as I say, from a tunnel or something like that, or as a really early crop outside. Salad potatoes it's more for steaming and adding to salads, not your typical sort of mash or chipping potato. It's very much a salad potato but it is really nice for that and you'll see lots of them available. It's a really quite clean looking, white skinned, clean looking potato, not huge in terms of size but again, you'd expect that from a salad potato but a very good variety and if you are going to grow a salad potato it's an excellent choice.

Speaker 1: 19:05

Other one that you see, kind of a little bit of a novelty in terms of shape, is pink for a apple. You'll see that quite a lot. I've never grown that one personally. It's quite elongated and knobbly but interesting looking, decent cropper. Can't speak for the taste of it because I've actually never eaten one, but I know they're very, very popular and people speak highly of them. So I'd say you wouldn't go too far around if you're a salad potato and you got pink for an apple.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Then to come around to the ones that I grew last year and I suppose the feedback on them at the end of the growing season. So I started with four life varieties. I did grow some red jupe york for an area crop in the tunnel and they were delicious. Very low, a very small crop from them. I will definitely grow an area again, but I don't think it'll be red jupe york this year, probably be Sharp's Express, just to go back to that, because I have grown in the past and it has been, to be honest, much better.

Speaker 1: 20:10

When it comes to the life free varieties, I was really impressed by the ones that I had. So I had Vitabella, alloet, carolus and Sarpo Axona and there are several Sarpo's. They're all blood resistant. So there's Sarpo Myra, sarpo Una, sarpo Axona and all have blood resistance. Carolus is a potato that has. It's a main crop, so Axona is a main crop, carolus is a main crop.

Speaker 1: 20:43

The next one I had was Alouette it's a secondary and Vitabella, which is an area. So to give you the rundown of them, none of them got light. They had really really strong light resistance. So from a light perspective you have absolutely no worries with them. Vitabella really good harvest on it. Quite big potatoes, beautiful, absolutely beautiful. They will definitely be grown them again, high light resistance.

Speaker 1: 21:12

Now, in the area when I planted all four of these varieties I did have quite a lot of slug issues and that has been the biggest problem, but that's no fault of the potatoes. But in terms of the quality of the potatoes, vitabella was superb, definitely grown again. Some would not much slug issues on them. As I say, not much, and it was the one I harvested first, so that might explain why I had less slug issues there.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Alouette, the secondary, beautiful red potato, not dissimilar to a rooster or a satanta, that got absolutely ravaged with slugs and it was so for strip because there was a brilliant crop, a really heavy crop, and by the time I started actually getting into harvested the damage was already done. If I had to kind of know, maybe a little bit earlier, I probably would have took them out even a bit smaller, just to save on that. It was so frustrating. I actually recorded a short video, which has 800,000 views on TikTok, of me peening back the skin and cutting where the damage was and just it shows a full potato which by the time I was finished peering back the damage was literally a marble in the hand and it was really frustrating. Now, there weren't. I was able to pick out some out of it, but it was just a lot of effort to get some good ones out of it and the crop was really badly damaged by, really badly damaged by the slugs. Having said that, from a taste perspective it was delicious, really good, and so I would grow it again.

Speaker 1: 22:56

But I would have to be conscious, or more conscious, of slugs. What caused the slug issue? It was new ground, for where I was going into there was, and is, a hedge that runs along it, so slugs would have had a lot of hiding areas there, which would leave some debris underneath the hedge, so the slugs would have been in the vicinity, obviously helped by the really wet summer. Again would have been helped by the fact that I planted these into loose soil in a no dig way, so I didn't create drills and that worked really well from the point of view of having a good crop, but it doesn't help if you have slugs in the ground. So the mounds definitely helped. From a slug perspective, I wouldn't have solved the issue completely. I still would have had some issues, but I probably would have had less issues.

Speaker 1: 23:47

Vitabella, definitely for me again this year. Aloe Again, I would say more likely tasted really good, good variety, absolutely no blight issues with either of them. Perilous the next one not so good of a crop, in fact quite a poor crop. Some of them were hardly work digging, and this is in the exact same ground that the aloe and vitabella from brilliant things. So Perilous really didn't perform well here. That being said, a lot of people speak really highly of that perilous, so I will try it again. Whether I try this year or not, I don't know, but I will definitely try it again.

Speaker 1: 24:24

And Serpo Axona was a complete fail, again for slug reasons, and so I didn't really get to taste them the way that I would have liked to make an assessment on them, because a lot of people speak about Axona and Una and Mira as being not that tasty. But somebody had said that the longer you leave Axona in the ground the better it tastes, and that was my downfall in a way, because the slugs just had too much damage done by the time I got to it and so that for me was complete right off. But it's always learning, it's always. You're always. Every day is a school day is the same.

Speaker 1: 25:06

But vitabella, spectacular aloe, excellent. Perilous not so much, and I see this year Perilous is marked on peribotum. Last year is marked as a harvest fail. So that's going to be quite common because there is a lot of varieties that are either a harvest fail or they're getting rejected at certification stage because of disease issues that are there. So yeah, look, there are the varieties I had. Two out of four were successful, with the exception of without the slopes. They would have been really good.

Speaker 1: 25:48

So it wasn't a good year for growing potatoes for me, but definitely going to have another goal this year. I normally have great success, so it was one of those things. The blight resistance was why I was growing them and that really impressed me. I was absolutely thrilled with that. Went away for my holiday, come back and they're still perfect, and that's a big plus to not have to do that on a consistent basis, because it's so easy, especially when we get so much wet weather that we didn't even get out. It's so easy to miss a week and the next thing the problem is on top of you and it's very hard to reverse it or even to control it at that stage. So for me, life free writing is where the way to go and are the way to go. I just need to watch that next year, particularly need to watch that with the slopes, because that was the only downside of growing those varieties. So, as I said, it's kind of a short enough episode. I just wanted to cover off those varieties.

Speaker 1: 26:48

I have spoke before about what you need to do to grow in terms of planting depths and sizes and treatments and all of that sort of stuff, but this was more practical stuff on the actual varieties and which ones may or may not suit you in your garden. Reason being stock is definitely going to be tight out there, so I would. If you're planning to grow potatoes, if you're thinking about growing potatoes, I would be sourcing seeds as soon as you can. You can keep them down in a dark and cool place for the next while until you're ready to actually plant them out. Some people will be chitting them quite early and they're probably chitting them already in certain parts of the country. I personally don't. I find that if you just wait to the ground temperature or induce the ground temperature up to a certain temperature by using the likes of black plastic, then that kind of gives you the start you need when the potato goes into the ground Cold ground that is really where you start to, where you get a really slow start with potatoes. If they hit the ground and there's heat in that ground, they will burst out of it and that's where I think they it's more useful than having the chitting read on. So, but everyone is everyone has their own opinions on that and I know a lot of people do the chitting. People get into great excitement out of it and find great benefit in it. Just, personally, I don't or haven't used it so much in the past, but that's not to say I want in the future.

Speaker 1: 28:23

So yeah, really short episode, just chat about you know, the data varieties. Next week's episode, going to Australia actually for the first time, I think and I'm chatting with Kate Flood, who's the compost porch, and Kate talks about everything to do with composting. So she's just released a new book called the compost porch and we talk about everything from the cashew beans to hot composting, to your slow compost, to compost teens, biochar and lots and lots in between. It's really interesting and entertaining chat and you learn so much about compost in next week's episode. And that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening.