Talking Tatties

Spuds. If you’ve got an allotment, you almost undoubtedly grow them.

In our house we like jacket spuds, wedges and roast tatties the best. The perfect jacket spud variety, to my mind, is Cara. Big, round and fluffy. And you’ll generally find that if they do jackets well, wedges and roasties are a given.

But, what are they like to grow? I’ve had good results from Cara at the allotment, but in recent years, the harvests have been questionable. I think it’s mainly because they’re a late maincrop – being in the ground so long, they become more susceptible to slug and wireworm damage.

So my quest over the next few years is to find the perfect jacket spud. One that not only fulfils the obvious requirements of size and fluffiness, but also grows well and is less prone to damage and disease. My intention for 2013 is to do less quantities of one variety and trial a smaller amount of a few different ones.

This year, I relied solely on Kestrel. Notwithstanding the fact my spuds didn’t do great in general, Kestrel is not the one I’m looking for. We had some decent tubers, but they were too waxy to be perfect.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be researching online and perusing the seed catalogues to decide what to try in 2013. My pursuit of the perfect ‘spud-u-like’ starts here.