"jane" wrote in message ...
I went with an allotment collegue to the HDRA this weekend, where they
were holding their annual potato weekend. Together with talks on how
to grow potatoes, biological control of slugs and pests and diseases,
they also had a large tent with 150+ varieties on sale, by the
individual tuber so one can buy as many or few as needed, and it also
gives room to experiment!

It was fun. I have only grown one lot of spuds (International kidney)
deliberately so far (and a crop of unknown variety volunteers the
first year I had the allotment!) and was bemused as to which ones to
choose to grow.
((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.

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.
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.

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.

--
Regards
Bob

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