Catalogue time - potatos

It's that time of year when all the catalogues have dropped through the letterbox, and stay piled up on the floor until someone either reads them or piles them up as they always look too glossy to throw away, until the nights draw in and there's little to do of an evening than sit down and fantasize about all the new F1 hybrids one might grow if one wasn't so parsimonious. This year I'm sorely tempted by T&Ms special potato catalogue, with it's attractively weird blue heritage varieties and new, blight-busting, bag-bursting super spuds.

The terrible blight of this year has prompted me to consider changing from my auto-pilot choice of spuds.I'd also like to increase the range that I grow to have more suitable exhibition varieties. However, one of the reasons I like to buy seed loose is that I don't have room for more than a couple of rows of any one variety, so only have need from between 4-8 of any single cultivar, which works out quite reasonable when bought loose from local garden centres or from bargain packs. However, I've found it more difficult to find varieties I like in recent years available from these sources.

What I need is a mixture of waxy second-early/early maincrop which can be used in late summer as 'new' boiling potatoes, but also bulk up for use as early maincrops,  and floury late maincrop for mashing and roasting. All need to be are blight, slug and scab resistant. 

Sadly, none of the waxy types are particularly blight resistant, and though Charlotte and Anya are also fine-flavoured varieties, they fall down on other qualities (scab, bruising, size, greening, shorter dormancy etc). 

Very few maincrops/late maincrops describe themselves as 'floury'. Many are only described as 'don't disintegrate on boiling' which isn't of great interest to me as I don't really like plain boiled potatoes.

On general purpose/exhibition use, there are a few that stand out:

Setanta bred from Rooster, so floury 'high dry matter' spud but with better all round qualities and higher disease resistance (including good resistance to common scab, so potentially more attractive tubers than the parent), I think I will give it a go next year.

Druid looks promising on this front. Vigourous, disease resistant, nice colour, large, even tubers that might make do for exhibition as well. However, not much detail on texture or flavour, and I've wasted space far too many un-memorable spuds in my time. Will trial if I can find a small number to try.

Orla also sounds quite appealing "Very grower friendly, it produces high yields with good baker content. It shows good foliage blight resistance and excellent tuber blight resistance." 

Red Cara also sounds good "Very resistant to a vast range of diseases and viruses. Tubers are uniform and suitable for a range of culinary uses including home chipping. It is high yielding and keeps well in storage"

Blue Danube appeals just because of the beauty of the deep purple tubers. Good resistance to blight but not so good on common scab, and susceptible to dry rot and some nematodes. No information on flavour or dormancy. 

Harmony has good exhibition qualities and dormancy but not so good on blight resistance.

Nadine also looks a promising oval white for exhibition, and has good overall disease resistance and very good yields. No description of culinary qualities though.