Small Seed Potatoes

Hi chums.

I planted up my Arran Pilots around mid April. At the time I was concerned as the seed seemed a bit on the small side. So, I got in touch with T&M and was reassured that they would be fine. Bear in mind, that a lot of these seed were not much more than an inch across. At this time, I have to say that the plants are looking very poor. Not much more than 18" tall and very weedy looking. I also have a bed of Charlottes, which look much better, so I don't think it's the weather. Any thoughts?

Cheers...Freddy

 

We used to plant tons of those small potatoes on the farm, but we planted them about 60-70mm apart and they produced a good yield. Even if you spaced them out I don't think the size would make them look poorly.

 

I was going to ask the same thing a while back about onion sets, I got 5 bags of sets from poundland, 4 bags of whites, and one bag of "Red Baron", all the white bags had 42 or 43 offsets for the 300grams, but the RB's had 120 offsets, the ranged in size from medium to tiny, I planted the lot wondering if I'd waisted my time planting the very small ones? I sorted them by size and planted the biggest first (incase I ran out of space) at the mo 95% of them have produced plants, BUT the small ones are very, very, small, the look like red spring onions, and I'll use them as such if they dont catch up.

Anyway, I know an onion's not a tatty, but I do think little things take longer or dont/can't catch up.

 

The size of a hen's egg is the rule of thumb for size I've always followed as being the best size for seed spuds. I've also been advised that larger seed spuds grow bigger sized individual crop potatoes, especially if you reduce the number of shoots - and I've found this works when growing big spuds for 'largest in show'.

So I always buy my spuds by weight and carefully choose the supplier to get the best size/weight/cost ratio. I avoid T&M who sell their's online by 'packs of 20' or something like that as ithey can't be compared in any way whatsover to those you can individually select and pay per Kg at a good garden centre.

Anything I somehow buy that's only 1" dia. gets 'doubled up', but around here it's been a awful year for spuds, with terrible losses for those who planted early (and possibly later during the cold/wet spell, or even later in the also rubbishy weather).

 

Hi folks, thanks for the replies.

It sounds like just 'one of those things'. A pity, cos I DO like me Pilots.

 

Hello Sailor:WINK1:

 

Hey miserable git, aka Freddy. Grumpy Grampy here .

Why not do what I do, track down a decent G/C that has a selection of seed spuds where you can select each one individually.

Cheers, Tony.

 

Nothing (more) to be lost by getting back to T&M with pics of the 'failed crop', refering them to their previous advice that they'd be OK and request a refund.

60-70mm apart is only 2.5 inches apart - never heard of them being planted that close before as apart from the seed spuds being almost touching, surely there would be no room for each seed spud to form a crop of new tubers.

 

You only get one or 2 sprouts on a spud that size, where you get about 8 on a larger one so it equals out.

 

Yup, that's what I'm gonna do, next year:WINK1:

 

Yeah, I might just do that...

 

OOH, you are awful...

 

I know it's off topic but you've just got to look up some of the Dick Emery clips off the internettyweb...an absolute scream....
Sorry back to tatties