If you have not bought your seed potatoes yet..

Jamieson Brothers of Annan (JBA) Southern Scotland supply just about every other source of seed potatoes in the copntry so all local garden centres online gardening companies etc order from JBA and repack and distribute as they see fit.

They are local to me so a group from our allotment club together and visit to pickup what we want direct from source, we save a huge ammount on initial cost and delivery by doing this.

We went to collect end of January last year and the warehouses which are huge where overflowing with stock, and I have just come back from there an hour ago, stock is pitifully low, a few handfulls of pallets only.

The owner told us he has despatched more seed potatoes in the 20 days of January this year, than he did in the whole of last year put together.

I am guessing that demand is higher so far this year so I'm giving everyone a heads up to get their seed potatoes and to not leave it too late in case demand really is so high that it outstrips supply.

One of the sacks we bought was International Kidney (Jersey Royals) and we got the last sack!

Steve...

 

Thanks for the heads up Steve I shall get mine ASAP

 

Thanks for the info Steve

 

Got some from Wilko today, fill a small bag with loose spuds for £1.50 or large bag for £2.50, got the following in small bags (NB take a pen to mark each bag with variety):

£1.50 for 18 x Picasso (deliberately selected largish ones), 1.79Kg, 83p/Kg
£1.50 for 28 x Kestrel (egg size), 1.7Kg, 88p/Kg
£1.50 for 31 x Charlotte, 1.77Kg, 85p/Kg

Can't find anywhere cheaper than that. Should have picked up a large bag to check capacity and see if better value as they could be filled with different varieties each in labelled sandwich bags.



Didn't make notes instore, but the list of varieties on the bags is:

Charlotte
Kestrel
Cara
Sharpes Express
Picasso
Majestic
Accent
Wilja
Red Duke of York
Anya
Pentland Crown


EDIT: Checked how many loose spuds would fit into a 'large' bag today and it was only 2.14KG making them £1.17/Kg which is far more expensive than the 85p/Kg it worked out to when buying using the smaller £1.50 bags.

 

Morrisons now have theirs in...tho not much choice for those of you who are variety-knowledgeable. By the onion sets.

 

Arran Pilot and Maris Peer only in my local store, £1 for 10, and the ones I looked at were sized between small and tiddlers, so expensive per Kg, and probably very little left of some of them by the time they've put energy into sprouting and have been left until planting time.

 

No Kondor at JBA http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/Kondor?filter_name=kondor , so have ordered from elsewhere.

 

I purchased some from a local discount garden centre today here in Plymouth 8 reasonable seed potatoes for 99p I got two packs of 'Charlotte' and one each of 'Desiree' and 'Maris Piper'

Sent from my SM-A300FU using Tapatalk

 

Use the smaller £1.50 bags as they work out much cheaper than the larger ones.

I grabbed an empty 'large' £2.50 bag from Wilkos this morning and could only get 2.14Kg (28 Kestrel + 10 Charlotte) of my previously bought spuds into it, which @ £1.17/Kg, would make them far more expensive than the 85p/Kg they cost if buying in small/£1.50 bags.

P.S. Will check volumes of those bags later on, although I think part of it is that the smaller bags are optimum shape/size to hold the most of what I class as 'normal' size seed spuds.


EDIT:

£1.50 small bag capacity = 4 pints
£2.50 large bag capacity = 5.5 pints

Large bags cost 67% more, but only hold 38% more, and in practice they don't actually hold that amount extra as the spuds seem to fit better in the smaller bags.

 

I ordered some from JBA yesterday

Gone for Sarpo Mira and Kestrel

I went to my local garden centre where i normally buy my spuds from, they only had half of the usual varieties to choose from. I don't recall seeing any Sarpo Mira's at Wilko's last year either so i just ordered from JBA direct this time.

It came to £12-something but if you factor in petrol and time i suppose its about the same as getting them from the shops. They are £4 a bag in my local garden centre.

 

My Kondor seed spuds arrived today, 26 weighing 3Kg, so some nice big ones amongst them as bigger seed spuds normally produce bigger potatoes, especially when you have a furtle around the roots and remove all but one of the new tubers, the smaller tubers will be left to grow normally and keep Mrs Scrungee happy with some baking potatoes for eating rather than showing.

 

There's definitely 2 sizes.

The biggest are on 2 floors (think furniture might be biggest difference?), the ones that I've visited are Weymouth and Bedford.

Other stores can stock different products, Bicester Wikos sell poultry equipment, but none of the other 3 sell it. Last year I couldn't find loose spuds anywhere, but they were the 2nd store I checked this year.

A call/email to their Customer Services might help.


EDIT 3 Sizes, just noticed Department Stores and Hardware Store when using storefinder Google, loose spuds were in a Department Store.