Chicken bald back

[Daphne]

I've been eating my way through sacks of these spuds over the winter period. They are a red, and I find them more delicious than Desiree which was my previous fave, particularly for baked spuds and roasties. Has anyone grown them? I'm wondering if they are easy or have any issues.

[sjp]

I've been eating my way through sacks of these spuds over the winter period. They are a red, and I find them more delicious than Desiree which was my previous fave, particularly for baked spuds and roasties. Has anyone grown them? I'm wondering if they are easy or have any issues.

Yes I grown them but not for a couple of years ,as like all spuds there easy to grow it's supposed to have moderate blight resistance but all that means is that it has none. it's a spud I've recommend but it's not always easy to get hold off and I agree it's by far better than desiree but I'm biased as I dislike desiree

[chickencam]

We grew them for the first time last year. We have just bought some more as our primary main crop for this year. They grew very well on our sandy soil and were easy to harvest with high yields of good sized tasty potatoes. They make particularly good roast potatoes and chips because they have a high dry matter content. We found that they had some slug damage but nothing like some of the other varieties. We used to grow mostly Picasso as our main crop because of the way they produce huge potatoes in nice neat clumps, but in the past few years we have had terrible problems with them splitting. They grow to ridiculous sizes too.

 

We also grew another good red called Asterix last year which is primarily a chip variety, these also gave Hugh yields of longer oval tubers.

[sjp]

splitting in potatoes is down to irregular watering and is mainly a drought related problem (it can be a problem in sandy soil any season) it's caused when the potatoes stop growing due to not getting enough water and then a sudden influx of water which starts then growing again but because they had stated to mature and set their skins to protect the tubes over winter they split some varieties are more prone to splitting than others you can get every tuber on a root split or just the odd one or two their still edible

[chickencam]

We grew Picasso for many years whilst our soil was of a much poorer quality without a problem but Iin recent seasons which have actually had better more even rain etc they have been awful pretty much everyone is split. We put it down to an extreme version of scab at first because we were digging the trenches and lining them with rotted bark chippings from the chicken runs. The other potatoes seem to love this but the Picassos not so much, they are huge but split. We wondered if the seed potatoes had had a change in quality. After 3 years of perseverance we have decided to move away from Picasso. We don't get this issue with other varieties apart from Bonnie which I believe is closely related to Picasso.

[sjp]

it would be the seed potatoes causing the problem it could be the wood chip in the trench drying out and then getting wet I probably have explained properly splitting is basically stop start growing and is almost always caused by environmental factors. some varieties are more prone to splitting sadly as good as Picasso is it does' have it faults , if it's one you really like to grow try Cara it's one of Picasso's parents but sadly it didn't pass on any it's good points. Bonnie's not one of my favourite spuds it tends to be a bit fussy about were it likes to grow.one of the worst for splitting is Tuluca I've fetched tubers out that have been all split and no spud. it's splits early in the season to when the tubers have no real size to them

scab is the only potato aliment that I don't worry about any more the main co"Ooops, word censored!" is to much lime in the soil followed by dry soil but I've had bad scab in well manured soil wet soil dry soil and in potting compost