BLIGHT FREE POTATOES, YES WE CAN!

Back in June this year I was summoned to the gate to meet a very friendly chap who wanted us to trial some maincrop potatoes that he was going to donate to us. I was quite dubious as here in Cornwall we can never grow maincrop spuds due to the onset of blight which this year had even hit our first and second earlies a month earlier than normal. He assured us that they were as blight free guaranteed as you could get in the UK. I said I doubted they would be any good, we were a good 6 weeks late in planting and I KNEW they would get blight as it was turning out to be an exeptionally wet summer also with the humidity just right, (or wrong), the exercise seemed pointless.

I was surprised when he produced 2 hefty 25kg sackfulls for us to try. As they were free of charge other than giving feedback on our results, I decided to persuade several of our members to plant a few rows on any spare land they had left. This wasn't easy as it was peak season and although a 50 ft allotment is reasonable to grow what you need, it can be under a bit of pressure for space at times, certainly for potato rows. Around 12 of us, including myself, found room to plant a few rows and they were showing within 2 weeks.

Blighty weather continued through July and August but we tended these potatoes as normal, earthing up, etc. and the plants looked very healthy so we were keeping our fingers crossed that they would stay that way.

They flowered this month and one of our tenants could not resist digging some and we were amazed at the crop, photo here of three roots and vowed to grow these next year as we have been frustrated at our efforts the last 3 years.

The type are SARPO MIRA maincrop and if the JBA potatoes website is looked at, they have a good write up so we know what to do now and thank the friendly guy at the gate that day for nagging us to try them!

The proof will of course be when we see how well they cook and keep.

One pic of the three root crop and the other of how the remainder of the row looked this week. Pretty good.