p.mc wrote:
Novice grower eager to be educated from Merseyside (not exactly tropical :-)

My homeland. :-)
(currently exported to Essex)

Well I had my toms etc going early this year (Jan 2011) as I propergated
them from seed in my home made propergator in the heated tunnel. but I
suppose I could leave it a bit longer next year if need be Vicky.

Personally I've never had any luck with tomatoes sown before March. I've
heard people starting them off as early as boxing day, but they've always
been weak and weedy for me.

Also, "what seed potatoes would you suggest Mike? This year I grew some
varieties (earlies, main etc) in sacks (can't remeber them now, bought from
Home bargain centre)

Ooh, now I saw them, if only I could remember what they stocked. Were they
white? Iirc, they had Kestrel (which are white-purple), Rocket and ..
Markies? Something like that. Any of them sound familiar?

but I was a bit dissapointed with the crop even though
I'd left them full term, and they where also a bit mushy when boiled. (Maybe
not dried out enough!)

That'll be the variety, rather than anything to do with how you grew them.
There's a huge variety of potatoes, each with different properties - there's
the obvious floury/waxy textured ones (which is where you get your mushy or
solid when cooked from), different skin and flesh colours, better or worse
resistance to blight/eelworm/slugs, and vastly different size and yield.
And on top of that, they all taste different. :-)
Usually we take a trip to the Hampshire potato day in January (do a google
for potato days, there's may be one close to you that you could visit) with
the intention of getting 3 or 4 varieties, and almost always end up bringing
home 12+ varieties! Our favourite is kestrel, but there is a poster here
(sorry, can't remember who it is now!) who hates kestrel. All a bit hit and
miss, trial and error!

" I'd probably plant them in sacks in the tunnel though. Could I get
anything growing on the staging too?

I normally start things off on the staging, then move them to ground height
when moving them on into bigger pots.