Shopping Seed Potatoes, The Season Starts

For me, the season starts when I get and set out my seed potatoes to chit. The first task is, of course, to get the seed potatoes.

Seed Potatoes for sale at Tyddyn Sachau

Seed potatoes in ‘pick your own’ bins for sale at Tyddyn Sachau garden centre.

Whilst it is possible to save and use your own potatoes as seed for the new crop, inevitably viral diseases will accumulate and yields decrease. I’ve saved my own seed potatoes in the past but never for more than three years in a row. Buying fresh seed potatoes ensures I’m starting with quality, disease-free stock.

There is an option to buy ware (eating) potatoes as seed. This is something I’ve done a couple of times and had good results. One year I had my seed potatoes from a chap who supplied show-growers with selected seed potatoes. The Anya were pathetic, hardly bigger than a fingernail. I saw a bag of them in a supermarket and thought, “Why not try, what’s to lose?” We had a great crop off them.

Usually there’s not a big financial saving from using ware potatoes as seed potatoes and often you can’t find the varieties you want, but it’s worth a go if you’ve no option.

Best Place to Buy Seed Potatoes

When it comes to ‘where to buy from?’ there are three main choices:

  • Specialist online suppliers, who may have a better choice of varieties.
  • DIY Sheds etc. – who are often online as well. You’d expect these to have the lowest price – but you’d be wrong.
  • A decent garden centre.

What to consider?

There are three things you need to consider when choosing where to buy your seed potatoes:

  • Range
  • Quality / Tuber Size
  • Price

Range of Seed Potatoes for Sale

Now this year is a bit unusual. The weather last year was so terrible that many growers couldn’t produce the seed potatoes they planned. Some of the less popular varieties, those that are maybe produced by only one or two farms are simply unavailable.

I wanted to keep down to just three varieties this year.

  • Casablanca, a versatile first early. I’ve grown this for a few years and it’s high-yielding so my first choice for a first early.
  • Orla, which is basically an early that can be left in the ground to grow on. Alternatively Estima, which Val prefers for the kitchen.
  • Finally, Sarpo Axona. Not as much of a thug as Sarpo Mira, but Axona still produces good yields of what I think are better potatoes. Both are main crops that are very blight resistant being members of the Sarpo family.

Quality / Tuber Size

There’s no great difference with certified seed potatoes in quality. They’re generally very good assuming they’ve been looked after in the shop. The big differences are in size. Ideally, you want a seed potato around the size of a hen’s egg. Enough stored energy to get the plant off to a good start but not so large as to be wasteful. Larger potatoes mean fewer potatoes per kilo of seed, so higher cost per plant.

Having said that, with larger seed potatoes you can cut them up, producing more plants per seed tuber. See this post: How many potatoes can you get from one seed potato?

Price

Obviously, we all want value for money. Online suppliers do have to recoup the delivery cost, which disadvantages them. Being in a rural area, our favourite local garden centre is actually 15 miles away. So in fairness, our cost to drive there is roughly £6.00 for fuel. Going places isn’t cheap with fuel costs as they are.

The online suppliers charge between £4.00 and £7.50 per kilo plus delivery charges ranging from £4.99 to £6.99. Our excellent local garden centre, Tyddyn Sachau charges a straight £2.50 per kilo.

The quality of the potatoes is excellent and, as you pick your own from the sack at our garden centre, you get the ideal size that you want. The range offered is as good as any online retailer, and better than most.

I got the Casablanca I wanted. Couldn’t see Orla but I did get Estima. No Axona either but I got Sarpo Mira. It seems Axona are in short supply most everywhere this year.

Onion Sets & Shallots

Whilst we were at Tyddyn Sachau, I picked up a few onion sets and shallots. This year I’m not going to grow many onions or shallots. Storage is the problem, with the high humidity we enjoy in rainy North Wales by the sea. Mould and rot love high humidity, causing a lot of waste when things rot in store. So just a few sets of red and white will have to suffice, accepting we’ll not be self-sufficient in onions.

The price at the garden centre was £6.50 a kilo and, like their seed potatoes, you pop what you want in a bag and they weigh it at the counter.

Incidentally, I checked a few prices online. B & Q only want £21.98 (excluding delivery!) per kilo for onion sets and Dobies shallots were on offer at a mere £15.98 a kilo, plus delivery.

I picked:

  • Sturon Onion – a reasonable standard onion, keeps well
  • Red Baron Onion – often said to be the best red onion.
  • Golden Gourmet Shallots – good-sized bulbs and well flavoured.
  • Red Sun Shallots – high yielding and good in salads.

Video

To finish off, here’s a quick video Cara shot with her phone whilst we were in the garden centre.

Posted in Allotment Garden Diary

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