On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 17:46:11 -0000, "Bob Hobden"
wrote:

~
~"jane" wrote in message ...
~ I went with an allotment collegue to the HDRA this weekend, where they
~ were holding their annual potato weekend.
more snips
~((SNIP)).
~
~ Meanwhile, I have got Pink Fir Apple, Ratte, Accent, Estima, Red Duke
~ of York, Mimi and the three trial Sarpo maincrops. Should be fun!
~
~ I can recommend next year's event to anyone interested in potatoes,
~ whether a novice like me or someone with years of experience.
~ Admission was 3.95 and worth a day out (fortunately mostly inside,
~ given the weather!)
~
~
~Unfortunately it's a bit far to go for us but luckily we have a local
~offshoot of an independent GC chain of two that does a good selection of
~seed spuds ( www.charlton-park.co.uk/ ) they also get in anything you want
~I'm told.
Sounds like a good place to know about...

~
~Our problem here is not Blight but slugs, they really are dreadful on our
~site. Tried Nemaslug last year but decided it was not effective enough to
~warrant the heavy cost, we could buy bags of commercially grown Organic
~spuds for the year and save on money and effort.
~So we are always on the lookout for slug resistant varieties.

The HDRA poster of recommended varieties had listed as slug resistant
King Edward, Pentland Dell, Red King Edward, Romano.

There was a lecture on Nemaslug, though typically it was more of a
sales talk and the chap who was doing it didn't know the answers to a
lot of basic science questions, like, if the nematodes find slugs to
breed and produce another generation, how come they've all died out
after 6 weeks (the reapplication time) if there are still lots of
slugs in the soil? They did recommend watering already wet ground
with the stuff at the end of March in order to knock down slug levels
for the rest of the season, as it needs to be able to penetrate down a
fair distance to work well.

~This year we have bought...FE:- Concorde: SE:- Kestral: EMc:- Romano:
~Mc:- Golden Wonder. The first two have proved themselves to be good doers
~here on our Thames silt/clay. Not grown the last two before but Romano is
~supposed to be even better at slug avoidance than Kestral, not sure about
~that or their keeping/eating qualities but we will see.

Kestrel is down as having reasonable blackleg resistance and good
eelworm resistance. Golden Wonder is down as scab resistant (which I
could use!). I can email you the full listing if you're interested - I
took a couple of digipics and transcribed the text when I got home...

I'm still trying to type up the pests and diseases talk, though have
done the growing from basics one.

~I understand NIAB has lots of details on their site regarding resistance to
~pests and disease and they have now graded spuds for slug resistance too,
~must take a look.

NIAB?
Ah, crop testing folk.

~
~Use a useful Screen Saver...
~http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
~and find intelligent life amongst the stars
~371 data units completed.
~
I had 7762 last time I looked. Oops!


--
jane

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone,
you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain

Please remove onmaps from replies, thanks!