It is that time of year again. If you got off to a good start with your potato planting this spring, you should now have new potatoes waiting to be dug up and savoured. Do you think it worthwhile to grow earlies for a treat in June or do you think it a waste of time and space, maybe because you think new potatoes are not very special to eat?
I was reminded of the controversy over new potatoes after reading bits in the RHS journal THE GARDEN. One article was all about how the farmers of Jersey produce their winter/spring crops of Jersey Royals. A letter from a reader then responded and said that Jersey Royals no longer have a special flavour and challenged the growers to tell her why.
This opens a can of worms. Let's get one thing straight first. New potatoes as sold in the supermarkets are usually not that new. They could be several months old and have been cold stored and maybe treated with CIPC to stop sprouting. The usual method is to grow an early variety until the little potatoes are the required size then to kill off the foliage with herbicide and leave the tubers to thicken their skins for 3 weeks before harvest. These are not new potatoes and will not taste like new potatoes. At other times, the baby potatoes are graded from a mature crop. The grader can take out the fraction 25 - 35mm and sell these smalls at an inflated price as baby potatoes.
But occasionally you see fresh potatoes with loose, flaky skins in the supermarkets. Now these have been harvested by digging up green plants with a harvester (Greentops). The skins are soft and are partly removed by the machinery. The whole skin can be easily rubbed or scraped off (hence the term 'scrapers' to describe these). If they are boiled or steamed immediately, they could have a really special taste. But often these loose-skinned potatoes don't get eaten for several days or even weeks and may be badly stored and may develop green chlorophyll just under the skin if exposed to light. These are very unlikely to taste special.
Some varieties produce tasty new potatoes and other don't. Is there any truth in this? Most growers agree that variety makes a difference. In the olden days (when I was a boy) Ayrshire potatoes were touted as being super-delicious in June. The variety favoured there was Epicure, a potato that matures to become quite floury. The Irish still like the old variety, British Queen, that is also quite floury. Maris Peer is now a popular variety widely used to produce 'new potatoes' for supermarkets. New varieties are popular for a few years then are superceeded by yet newer ones. Some of the gardener's favourites are still grown in gardens up and down the country (e.g. Sharp's Express and Duke of York etc). Some claim that the old French varieties like Ratte, Belle de Fontenay or BF15 are more tasty that home-bred varieties. I think some blind taste tests are warranted here.
And what about Jersey Royals? Well these are properly named 'International Kidney' and have been grown on the island for a very long time. International Kidney is a maincrop variety that has 'evolved' on Jersey to produce tasty earlies. This evolution is thought to be due to infection with a virus that changes the variety to one with earlier maturity. When the variety is cleaned of its virus, it goes back to being a maincrop. Another fact about Jerseys is that farmers around the coastline that had access to large amounts of seaweed (kelp etc) washed in by strorms naturally used this free fertilizers. This probably yielded a spud with a superior flavour. I hear that few if any growers are still using seaweed as a fertilizer. This alone might be why JRs do not taste as good these days as they used to do.
My recommendations for producing good flavour in earlies are:
Harvest while the potatoes are still small, scrape the skin off and boil/steam as soon as possible.
Let cooked potatoes cool as the flavour is at its best in warm not hot spuds.
Choose a variety known for its flavour. We think that Sarpo variety 'Kifli' is particularly tasty.
Experiment with the soil/compost you use e.g. add seaweed to one plot and keep a control plot without seaweed. And remember, you can plant early varieties from time to time until mid August and still get a useful crop of delicious new potatoes. You can even take a maincrop variety like 'Sarpo Mira' or Sarpo 'Axona' and plant it in July to get proper new potatoes in September/October. Second cropping like this is best when a late-blight resister is used because susceptable varieties can often be blitzed as soon as they emerge from the soil.
HRH The Princess Royal came to see us today!
Anne, the Princess Royal, helicoptered in to Henfaes Research Centre today to talk to SRT and to agricultural researchers in the School of Environment Natural Resources and Geography (SENRGY). She was accompanied by The Lord Lieutenant for Gwynedd the Vice Chancellor of Bangor University and The High Sheriff.
HRH was most interested in our work and admired our Sarpo varieties. She accepted a sample of certified seed of Axona and Blue Danube. She was particularly keen to try Blue Danube. Katherine Steele, SENRGY, told HRH about our collaborative work with Burpee on late-blight resistance in tomatoes
Guests included representatives of the Welsh Government, DEFRA, NERC and Snowdonia National Park.
I was too busy to take photos except the ones below.
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HRH was most interested in our work and admired our Sarpo varieties. She accepted a sample of certified seed of Axona and Blue Danube. She was particularly keen to try Blue Danube. Katherine Steele, SENRGY, told HRH about our collaborative work with Burpee on late-blight resistance in tomatoes
Guests included representatives of the Welsh Government, DEFRA, NERC and Snowdonia National Park.
I was too busy to take photos except the ones below.
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| Helicopter circles the farm |
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Welsh Government Minister visits the Trust
@WG_FinanceMin ister and Leader of the Assembly, Jane Hutt, came to Henfaes Research Centre on Thursday with the CE of WEFO (Welsh European Funding Office) to find out how KESS (Knowledge, Economy Skills Studentships) have benefitted SRT and Bangor University.
Our students, James Stroud and Natalie Chivers, told her about their projects. James said how he had used molecular markers to identify late-blight resistance genes in tomato and different strains of Phytophthora infestans. Collaboration with Burpee Europe and Dr Katherine Steele, Bangor University, has culminated in the selection of a new cultivar of tomato, Crimson Crush, with excellent blight resistance for outdoor growing in UK. Natalie explained how her project will find out how far fields of flowering potatoes benefit pollinating and predatory insects. Another KESS studentship to Simon White is using molecular probes to identify blight resistance genes that can be bred into new Sarpo potato varieties.
Guests were pleased to receive gifts of certified seed potatoes resistant to blight. The Minister said she would give some to her colleague, Deputy Minister for Food and Farming, Rebecca Evans AM
L to R: Damian O'Brien (CE WEFO); David Shaw (SRT) Minister Jane Hutt, Natalie Chivers; James Stroud and Katherine Steele.
Our students, James Stroud and Natalie Chivers, told her about their projects. James said how he had used molecular markers to identify late-blight resistance genes in tomato and different strains of Phytophthora infestans. Collaboration with Burpee Europe and Dr Katherine Steele, Bangor University, has culminated in the selection of a new cultivar of tomato, Crimson Crush, with excellent blight resistance for outdoor growing in UK. Natalie explained how her project will find out how far fields of flowering potatoes benefit pollinating and predatory insects. Another KESS studentship to Simon White is using molecular probes to identify blight resistance genes that can be bred into new Sarpo potato varieties.
Guests were pleased to receive gifts of certified seed potatoes resistant to blight. The Minister said she would give some to her colleague, Deputy Minister for Food and Farming, Rebecca Evans AM
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| James and Natalie with posters |
Buying certified seed of Sarpo blight-resistant potatoes
We are pleased to announce that @organicplantsuk are selling the whole range of our low-input potato varieties by mail order. Hurry while stocks last.
They also sell a range of organically grown veg plants of the best varieties raised in peat-free compost for the gardener.
They also sell a range of organically grown veg plants of the best varieties raised in peat-free compost for the gardener.
Our new blight resister is a tomato!
In recent years, trying to grow tomatoes outdoors has been a waste of time. But now you can plant a new variety,Crimson Crush, confident that it will cope when the potato/tomato blight strikes in June or July each year.
Crimson Crush is a cordon (indeterminate) tomato with large fruits and a good flavour and is available as seedlings from Suttons Seeds.
The research behind this new variety was a collaboration between the Sarvari Research Trust, Bangor University and an independent breeder, Simon Crawford of Burpee Europe. The project was part funded by a Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) of the EU to James Stroud, a PhD student supervised by BU crop breeder, Katherine Steele.
Breeding material was screened for molecular markers, indicating the presence of resistance genes known to be effective against Phytophthora infestans. In Crimson Crush, the resistance genes Ph-2 and Ph-3 are present. This combination confers improved resistance to the strains of blight that have arisen in recent years.
Crimson Crush is a cordon (indeterminate) tomato with large fruits and a good flavour and is available as seedlings from Suttons Seeds.
The research behind this new variety was a collaboration between the Sarvari Research Trust, Bangor University and an independent breeder, Simon Crawford of Burpee Europe. The project was part funded by a Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) of the EU to James Stroud, a PhD student supervised by BU crop breeder, Katherine Steele.
Breeding material was screened for molecular markers, indicating the presence of resistance genes known to be effective against Phytophthora infestans. In Crimson Crush, the resistance genes Ph-2 and Ph-3 are present. This combination confers improved resistance to the strains of blight that have arisen in recent years.
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| Katherine, James and Simon show the tomato trial at Henfaes Research Centre to Medwyn Williams |
Bees and potatoes and fungicides
Did you hear Dave Goulson just now BBC radio 4 "The life scientific" I am a great fan of Dave and have just read his book on Bumblebees "A sting in the tail". Dave et al. have been doing some experiments on Neonicotinoid insecticides, usually present in OSR (rape) fields as a seed dressing.
He treated half of his nests of a common bumblebee with a neonic, at the concentration calculated from the amount on pollen from treated plants that would be brought back to a nest. Later he counted new queens from treated and untreated nests and found 85% reduction in new queens in treated nests. Clearly the neonic at low concs has a drastic effect on nest productiviy.
This gets me wondering if the mix of fungicides applied to flowering crops of potatoes at weekly intervals to control late blight has any effect on the pollinating insects on the crop. We hope to learn more about pollinating insects on potato when we do an experiment at Henfaes Research Centre in 2014 as part of a KESS project. My MRes student, Natalie Chivers, will run the experiment and we hope to find out just how many bees and other insects are present in plots of various varieties of spud (Sarpo included) in different locations. We will not get all the answers but will certainly know more of the questions we need to ask.
A world food revolution - seawater-fed potatoes in the news
The Observer on Saturday heralded a breakthrough by a group from the Netherlands who are irrigating
their potatoes with diluted seawater.
Now why does that sound familiar.
Oh I remember. In 2012 and 2011 we conducted trials to find out if seawater can control late blight
of potato. And the result? We found that 50% seawater did not damage potato
plants growing in pots or in the field. When pots were watered with a dense suspension
of sporangia of P. infestans, seawater treated pots yielded healthy potatoes
whereas controls with tap water only,
had a high proportion of blighted tubers.
Results on blight control from field plots were less
convincing but there was a clear increase in yield of potatoes in the treated
plots in both of the fields chosen for
the trial when compared with fresh water plots.
This work was part-funded by
the Potato Council Ltd and by a KESS (Knowledge, Economy, Skills) scholarship
from Bangor University and the EU to our student, Lorena Larreon.
Observer Article: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/18/humble-potato-poised-to-launch-food-revolution