king Edward or Maris Piper

Hi All
Its the time of year to purchase my seed potatoes and the question is King Edwards or Maris Piper. I normally grow king Edwards but find the yield is quite low.

Thanks.
Dave

 

Why not try both dave that way you can compare in yield, quality and taste ready for next year

 

Or try Cara, very similar to both King Edward and Maris Piper with the added bonus of being blight resistant and heavy yielding.

 

My bro, who is a potato farmer, and ought to know, rates Maris Peer as the best tasting spud.

 

I was going to say that about King Edward's & blight, very succeptable. they were withdrawn for a while, we couldn't use the King Edward joke in the greengrocers for ages.

 

Taters, Wilja is the one,I don't have room to grow taters but if I see a sack of Wilja on the market I'm in there, Baked in their jackets you just cannot beat them the flavour is out of this world,discovered them when I lived in Cambridge and used to visit the potato growers in Biggleswade (Wholesale/Retail). who had just about every variety in open sacks for sale, up until then it was always King Edward.

 

If your local garden centre sells seed potatoes "loose" I recommend getting 5, or so, of several varieties and comparing them. Your soil conditions etc. will make a differences to the taste, so hopefully amongst the ones you try you will decide on a favourite for future years.

Personally I have found that King Edwards were very difficult to store over winter. Like the taste though. I also don't bother with Main Crop any more - more susceptible to Blight than early varieties and cheap to buy in Winter, and no storage problems as the farmers have cold-storage for them, and thus I only grow First/Second earlies for the great flavour straight-from-plot-to-pot and because New Spuds are expensive at that time in the season.

Of course after last season's poor weather and blight there are fewer spuds available than normal, so the price has gone up, but I think it still remains that main crop spuds take up a lot of space that could be used for higher value crops, and are hard to store much past Christmas (although I do find that Pink Fir Apple, and maybe other "Salad" varieties, store very well).

 

I grow King Edward every year, yield is generally low as is the tuber size, but I am trying an experiment this year giver the tubers more bed space to try and improve both yield and tuber size.

I grew them last season, I also grew Maris Piper and the Pipers yield/tuber size was far better.

Steve...

 

I grow Red duke of york ,going to give duke of york a go this year, both first earlies.Then Kestrel for second earlies and Desiree as main crop.I find that Desiree has a very high yield and doesn't seem to be full of holes from slugs or whatever else is eating other varieties that I have tried growing,and they store well and is a good allround potato.I addmit I did suffer from blight last year,like most other people I think. But as others have said try a few different varieties from a local garden centre,my local garden centre has leaflet in every box of loose potatos giving a description of which varieties are prone to blight scab ect.

 

Hi all
Thanks for the replies some great advice and help offered I think I will try both along with my usual pink fir apple, great to see the regular names still on this site.
Cheers
Dave