new potatoes

I recently harvested my crop of new spuds with drooling anticipation to find that after cooking they were bland and tasteless, They were Pentland Javelins, grown in fresh compost in containers.....nice looking small spuds, but very disappointing.
Any suggestions anyone ???

 

I am no expert but I know that some tatties do taste better than others (and it is a personnal choice)

I wonder if you might have over cooked them, I know I find that new tatties go from being almost cooked to mush very quickly. Did you put mint in the water? I think that helps bring out the flavour.

 

Ken. Welcome to the site. I seem to remember years ago reading somewhere that Pentland Javeline was a good spud that was used by crisp manufactures as it was a good all rounder.

We haven't grown them ourselves,sticking mainly to varieties like Suttons "Foremost" "King Edward" and "Desiree"
In the past we tried "Epicure" but didn't like the fact that they were floury and went too mush very quickly.

If you try again next year then a bit of feeding might not go amiss.

Sometimes it could just be a palet thing.What one person finds blande another person would rave over.I don't paticulaly like earthy tasting spuds but someone else might think they are the best thing since sliced bread.

Good luck for next year.Try a differant variety and just persevere


This year hasn't been too good for early spuds out our way due to the dry weather,though the taste has been ok.

Kandyfloss

 

Hi Ken. I grew Pentland Javelins last and also found that they lacked in taste. This year I've grown Lady Chrystl first earlies, Lady Balfour second earlies and Sarpo Axona maincrop; a relatively new variety which is supposed to be blight resistant; we'll see. I've also put a couple of rows of Desiree in as a fall back. The flavour of the Lady Chrystl was fantastic, and the Lady Balfour are good but more delicate. Too early for the Sarpo Axona! Will be certainly growing the ladies again next year.


Regards
BigT
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Big T.Sorry to be nosey.Where did you get your seed spuds from?I have heard of Desiree and Pentland Javeline.All the others are new to me.
I have a list of all the potato varieties somewhere tucked away.I shall have to fish it out and check your names.

Kandy

 

Hi Kandy, Lady Balfour, Lady Christl and Sarpo Axona all came from Thompson and Morgan, a bit pricy but well worth buying. I grew Lady Christl a couple of years ago and liked them, so have returned to them. Lady Balfour are a new variety this year as were the Sarpo Axona. I bought the Sarpos as a trial as last year I lost the whole maincrop of King Edwards to blight. Sarpo Axona are supposed to be the best blight resistant potatoes available. If the potatoes are as good as the tops we're in for a good crop!

BigT

 

Thanks for that Big T.It would be worth trying some next year.I shall have a look.We often get T&M catalogue as junk mail in magazines.

We have suffered with spud blight in the past.We find that once we see the leaves with blotches on them, we don't walk along the rows,even to weed them.We did that one year,and ended up causing the spores to drop unbeknown to us and so from 16 rows of spuds we got half a carrier bag from them.Since then we leave alone apart from digging them up.We always burn the foliage so that we don't spread it through composting

Kandy

 

Being a farmers daughter my dad would dig up the spuds then run water into bucket & use a scrubbing brush to get them cleaned.That was all it took,no scraping.A taste all of their own!

 

Pentland javelin potatos is rubbish, taste like wet cardboard, even thou the french are smelly an lazy they have tasty potatos, a frenchman who never ad a bath or done any work in is life gave me belle de fontenay to grow verry tasty, but I got blighted the next year so cant grow no more ere.

 

My thanks to you all...no more Javelins then, I'll give Lady Christl a go next time...cheers big T.
Ken.