Potato varieties - some further thoughts.

I had considered finishing with Nicola now that blight has started affecting us regularly, but its resistance to slugs and scab is good, problems are actually greater evils as far as storage and general usefulness. As long as action is taken early enough, it seems cutting foliage/strawing down do stop the blight from affecting the crop or and the yields isn't actually affected as badly. I have tried Sante in the past but I didn't rate the culinary quality, the yields weren't spectacular either and I didn't find the disease resistance any better than Nicola, though obviously the latter is more susceptible to blight. A possible alternative is Charlotte, which is a similar type of potato with a similar season and slightly better blight resistance, but less versatile than Nicola, with a smaller average tuber size.

The only other second early/maincrop I've ever liked was a round, purple-eyed variety whose name I forget. This was the highest yielding potato I've ever grown, but it simply couldn't find it after a couple of years. I think it must have been Picasso. Whether it would be as good in this location I don't know, its susceptibility to slugs might be a bit disappointing.

Potato crop: Nicola

Dug the remaining rows of Nicola today. Exceptionally clean crop this year with very little slug damage and only a tiny bit of scab.

Yield was a little less than the Rooster, 7 kg for two rows (6  or 7 tubers) but size was good, with a number of perfect tubers of fist-size for  baking. Most of the spoiled tubers were fork-damaged. Only one plant had blighted tubers. Considering how early blight struck this season, we were lucky to have any potatoes to store at all.

I think it is definitely worth getting seed in as early as possible. The first two rows of Nicola went in a couple of weeks before Easter, and were large, fully leafed plants whilst the later sowings were just breaking.

This is the potato council's evaluation of Nicola:

"Second early maturity, high number of uniform tubers per plant, medium to long dormancy. Good resistance to common scab, potato leaf roll virus, potato virus Y and bruising. Resistant to potato cyst nematode Ro1. Medium low dry matter, good boiling qualitities" Potato Council website

Best of all, no damage done to any toads today. I did see a grass snake tail slipping silently away as I cleared the straw, maybe the toads have all been eaten.

Not sure why these won a prize, they look dreadfully uneven!