Forget Gold, Buy Potatoes

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Forget Gold, Buy Potatoes
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leggy

Joined: 16 Jan 2009
Posts: 340
Location: Monmouth

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 12 8:56 pm Post subject:
Butter beans make a Good spud subsitute.

Chickem

Joined: 27 Mar 2009
Posts: 3958
Location: Sunny Devon

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 12 10:56 pm Post subject:

Our Main supplier of potatoes for the farm ( might be the same one as Sean) said that the King Edwards First planting totally failed and the second rotted in the ground

We grow a few acres of Charlottes and Maris peers, our harvest this year is just over 50% of the normal harvest as we have been unable to get the machine on the field with all the mud.
And in the 4 1/2 years I have worked there I have never seen such a poor carrot germination we're usually picking 'till febuary/March we'll be lucky to be picking them at New year.
On the whole it has been a really difficult year for Vegtable Farmers.
It has been difficult to get seeds to germinate, the fertilizer etc got rained off before it did any good and what has grown is really difficult and time consuming to harvest due to the mud.
Prices are going to rocket

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 12 11:00 pm Post subject:
Not just vegetable farmers - we've had to house the cows & calves two months earlier than usual because of the floods. My advice for anyone who eats is to enjoy Christmas, because 2013 is going to be pretty lean, although there probably will be a lot of meat around as everyone culls off stock.

gil
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 18415

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 12 1:20 am Post subject:
I was surprised to hear that one of my farming friends up here, who grows a substantial acreage of tatties, says it's been a good year I'm going there to buy a sackful before he sells out. Looking at what's for sale in general, the Scottish spuds are quite scabby this year.

AnnaD

Joined: 12 Jun 2007
Posts: 2777
Location: Edinburgh

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 12 8:55 am Post subject:
When I was in Perthshire a couple of months ago, I noticed that pretty much every potato field we passed was dead from blight. That's a lot of potatoes gone to waste. It was quite depressing to see.

Pilsbury

Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 5645
Location: East london/Essex

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 12 9:05 am Post subject:
Some have had a good year. Most will have good drainage and a significant gap between them and the next tattie farm and try will make a fortune as the price rockets but most have lost almost all and the price wi rocket and probably not come down for a few years even if there are good harvests as some will go out of business, grow less acarage or just try and recoup some of this years loss.

gardening-girl

Joined: 25 Feb 2009
Posts: 6024
Location: Somerset.

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 12 1:08 pm Post subject:
Spuds here are around �9/�11.50 a bag More than double last years prices.

Gai

Joined: 31 Dec 2004
Posts: 408
Location: Ireland

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 12 6:31 pm Post subject:

We were struck by blight in July. We spent a day digging up everything (British Queens, Arran Victory, Rooster, Golden Wonder & Kerrs Pinks), left them on the surface of the soil to dry off and stored them wrapped in many layers of newspaper in large plastic boxes in a cool, dark shed. We didn't really expect them to keep but we're still using them. Every day I take some for the dinner and have a quick pick through the others to discard any which look like they're going to go off. Haven't had to discard too many either. Most of what we gathered were small but everything has been very tasty so far. Blight was a huge problem here but I'll not be frightened of it again.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Sun Dec 16, 12 3:12 pm Post subject:
Wilja are all gone. I've bought a small bag of the Braunton grower's Maris Piper to see what they're like for home use. They were useless for work though, we're buying in spuds from Lincolnshire.

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Sun Dec 16, 12 5:40 pm Post subject:
I notice quite a few are now from Scotland and I did manage to avoid buying a bag of spuds from ..... France!

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Sun Dec 16, 12 5:54 pm Post subject:
These are not looking like my finest roast spuds. I'm going to have to have a chat with the greengrocers.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 13 7:41 pm Post subject:
Hmmph. The farm that our spuds usually come from can't get on to his fields to plant for this year's crop. We're allllll doooooomed.

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 13 7:45 pm Post subject:
And so it begins..

Ty Gwyn

Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4613
Location: Lampeter

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 13 7:52 pm Post subject:
They`ll be OK in Pembrokeshire,a few years back i sold some weaners to a couple on the coast,it was sleeting here ,and the land sodden,their Son was planting earlies,different worlds.

Rob R

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 13 8:23 pm Post subject:
It'd be interesting to know if he's planting earlies now. I expect a lot more spuds will be coming in from France & Spain this year.

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