Second earlies potato varieties

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
I'm pretty ignorant on spud growing, so please bar with me. I need to source seed for 1 acre of potatoes for harvesting June/July onwards. Hand sown on high pH soil & fairly low input. No current potato equipment available though I'm hoping a mate will be able to hire me a ridger.

What varieties should I be considering or not considering?
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
What's your market?

Salads; Maris Peer, Balana, Charlotte
Bakers; Marfona, Estima

The list is vast, have you any irrigation?

This is just a slightly upscaled garden venture! Irrigation will consist of a sprinkler on mains water.

Probably a mix of varieties - salads and bakers
 

Lincs Lass

Member
Location
north lincs
If you can get any then Desiree or Romano,,old varieties but multi use ,red skined,,I'm using one called Cultra ,can use them for anything,,also saffire and sunita.
 

bitwrx

Member
Thinking ahead, a former employer of mine had an old potato harvester/lifter machine that they used to harvest their domestic supply with (no doubt behind their old David Brown).

If it would be helpful I can ask if it might be for sale/hire. Not far from you, and from memory it would easily go on a trailer behind a pickup
 

Lincs Lass

Member
Location
north lincs
You will have to take into account the tuber count ,,the smaller they are ,the closer you plant them ,,If I remember rightly ,,a 50kg sack of 55m-65mm seed had approx 900 ,,then plant at 9 inch spacings ,roughly 1 tn per acre
 

David.

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
J11 M40
Go a long way to beat Pentland Javelin for flavour imo. Lovely second early before skin set, and really good roasters if kept with set skins.
 
Last edited:

Cowcorn

Member
Mixed Farmer
Hard to beat British Queens for flavour in the second early slot .
Dont know how the would cope under severe blight pressure. You might be busy with the bluestone and washing soda or maybe as bogweevil suggested mancozeb ?? Ah them were the days when we were young and innocent " creaming " the maneb before adding the bucket of cream to the spray tank. Cost feck all and as long as you kept the intervals short was very effective .
 

New Puritan

Member
Location
East Sussex
There's two threads running on people growing small areas of spuds now. Are you all hunkering down for the apocalypse? Planting them by hand (with the help of a ridger) isn't too bad, but digging them all up by hand is a massive pain in the arse.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.2%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.8%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,289
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top