Now is the time to order your seed potatoes or better still, to see if there is a ‘potato day’ near you where you can get to talk to the suppliers and buy varieties that you didn’t know even existed. Potatoes are listed as 1st earlies (ready in June and always very expensive to buy), 2nd earlies, maincrop and late varieties so you can dig up a fresh crop all summer long and even into autumn. At fairs you can buy tubers in small quantities-especially useful when you only have a small space or growbag to plant them in and you get to see some amazing heritage and heirloom varieties. These following websites will take you to lists of potato days that are being held all over the country in the next 2 months;
http://www.potato-days.net/ and http://www.potatoday.org/potatodays.htm
A variety of heritage potatoes
- I’ve spotted a potato day in London on February 27th that I’m going to try and get to. It’s at the Garden Museum in London and it promises 100 plus varieties of potatoes for sale by the single tuber, onion sets, shallots, garlic, Heritage Seeds, fruit trees, rhubarb crowns and much more. Sounds like my kind of fun!
If you can’ get to a potato fair, then there are plenty of online suppliers to order from too. I ordered some Pink Fir Apple seed potatoes (a ‘late season’ variety who’s delicious nutty flavoured potatoes will be ready to eat in September/October) and they were with me in a matter of days. Impressive! All I need to do now is to chit them. What does ‘chitting’ mean? Chitting just means encouraging potatoes to sprout before they are put into the ground, especially useful to get early varieties off to a flying start.
Chitting potatoes
The pink firs look like Antony Gormley’s “Field”!
Looks like I’m off to Eggesford Gardens in Feb then! Thanks for these posts, the’re really helpful 🙂
Oooh inspired.
Only wish we had a larger potatoe bed – thank you!
[…] neighbour had some spare chitted ’Charlotte’ seed potatoes when I got back from my Easter holiday, and inspired by […]
[…] still bitter outside, so I’ll chit these tubers in a cool and bright room until milder temperatures return. And planted at the end of […]