Seed Potato's or supermarket

zaax

Seed potatoes are very expensive. Last year I grew 4 chitted supermarket potatoes & got 4 buckets worth, this year I want to do the lot (20+ plants) with Supermarket brought potatoes. Any reason why not?

forgotmyname

Supermarket potatoes are not specifically bred to be disease free for replanting.

Ive done both also. But i did really well with seed potatoes last year.

Mojisola

zaax wrote: »

Seed potatoes are very expensive. Last year I grew 4 chitted supermarket potatoes & got 4 buckets worth, this year I want to do the lot (20+ plants) with Supermarket brought potatoes. Any reason why not?

Seed potatoes are more expensive because they are grown to be virus-free.

You can use potatoes from the supermarket and get away with it most years as long as you won't mind having an occasional year without potatoes (and maybe tomatoes as the plants are closely related and diseases will spread).

suisidevw

There are seed potatoes specifically for growing in morrisons now, think it was five or ten potatoes for £2 or so

RAS

Try to find a Potato Day locally.

Proper seed potatoes are often offered at 10-15p per tuber; you get a lot of choice and can buy exactly as many as you want. 3 earlies, salads and mains are more use than 10 earlies as a rule.

safestored4

One of the benefits of buying seed potatoes at the local garden centre is that you can grow varieties that you will never find in shops.

A good example is an old variety called Pink Fir Apple, a peculuiar odd shaped potato that looks a bit like root ginger. It has a lovely nutty taste, can be used as a salad potato, for chips, or roasted, and it keeps through the Winter to April.

There are many other distinctive varieties. If you take a pleasure from growing your own why penny pinch by using supermarket potatoes when you could be getting a better crop and growing something more interesting?

Mojisola

RAS wrote: »

Try to find a Potato Day locally.

Proper seed potatoes are often offered at 10-15p per tuber; you get a lot of choice and can buy exactly as many as you want. 3 earlies, salads and mains are more use than 10 earlies as a rule.

safestored4 wrote: »

One of the benefits of buying seed potatoes at the local garden centre is that you can grow varieties that you will never find in shops.

There are many other distinctive varieties. If you take a pleasure from growing your own why penny pinch by using supermarket potatoes when you could be getting a better crop and growing something more interesting?

The varieties that you find in supermarkets are the ones that have been bred to suit large-scale commercial farming. As the posters quote said, you can find much more interesting varieties sold as seed potatoes.

trollopscarletwoman

if you have one join your local horticultural society.

Mine is £4 per annum.

There you should be able to buy loose by weight spud seed tubers, onion sets, broad bean seeds, runner bean seeds, fertiliser, bean sticks, et al.

Well worth it.

And the volunteers will have a wealth of knowledge to boot.

suisidevw

Morrisons are doing 10x Maris Piper seed potatoes for £1. Mine are currently chitting on the window sill!

forgotmyname

I had some from the 99p shop last year.. They were good all round for chipping, mashing, roasting etc.. But i have forgot what they were...

Damn... They made the best chips i have had for years... Lovely and crispy yummy..

Any clues???

Growurown

I got 8 Pentland Javelin seed potatoes in Poundland for (you'll never guess what!) a pound. They look really good quality too.

I then went to Waitrose where they had 6 seed potatoes endorsed by Alan Titchmarch for £2.50:eek:

Needless to say I didn't buy them. I will go to the garden centre though and get some pink fir apple seed potatoes too because they are lovely.