EP317 What Potatoes Should I Plant ? Potatoes For First-Time Growers

Cold soil, heavy rain, and an eager itch to plant—this is the moment gardeners choose between rushing the season or stacking the odds for a great harvest. We dive into a clear, practical guide to picking potato varieties that fit both your garden and your plate, from fast-maturing salad types to flavour-packed second earlies and reliable main crops for storage. Along the way, we ground every tip in real conditions: soil temperature as your green light, earthing up to beat late frosts, and smart timing to dodge blight season.

We start with confidence builders. Charlotte tops the salad list for clean skins, high yields, and a waxy bite that loves vinaigrettes, while Pink Fir Apple and International Kidney add character if you crave variety. First earlies like Duke of York, Red Duke of York, and Sharpe’s Express earn their space by finishing early, freeing beds for summer crops. Vitabella brings a safety net with extra blight resistance, and Alouette offers rare early flouriness if you manage slugs by earthing up.

If taste is king, we champion British Queens. Get them into warm soil early and they deliver that floury, comforting texture that makes a simple plate sing. For the long game, we compare main crops: Records for a rich, slightly yellow flesh; King Edward and Maris Piper for classic roast quality; Rooster and Kerr’s Pink for trusted staples. If blight has caught you before, Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona are your calm in the storm—vigorous growth, clean foliage, and solid harvests that improve with patient maturity.

Threaded through are the small habits that decide big outcomes: planting depth at 10 cm, earthing up in stages, steady moisture during tuber set, and choosing containers when space or soil is against you. We also pause to honour the late Dr Elaine Ingham, whose soil food web work reshaped how many of us see life underfoot. Listen to a great episode of the podcast with Elaine here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/857398/episodes/10640939

 We discuss upcoming workshop dates plus a free Grow Your Own Food webinar for those who can’t travel. Sign up to the webinar here

http://subscribepage.io/growyourownfoodwebinar

Ready to pick a winning trio? Try Charlotte for a fast win, British Queens for flavour, and a Sarpo main crop for stress-free storage. If this guide helped, follow, share with a fellow grower, and leave a review to help more gardeners find us.

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Why Potatoes

SPEAKER_00 0:10

How's it going everybody and welcome to episode 317 of Master My Garden Podcast? Now, this week's episode we're talking about potatoes and different varieties and talking about their I suppose their attributes and yeah, what's good and what's worth trying and so on. And it's off the back of a listener's question asking what's the best potatoes for them to try as a first-time grower. And yeah, I suppose it's yeah, it's it's it's a tricky one to answer because it really depends on where you're grown, how you're grown, and I suppose most importantly, personal taste in relation to potatoes. So, but we're going to cover it, and it is an episode we've covered before, I'm not sure what episode, but I've definitely covered this before. Um but I suppose yeah, varieties change and update, and new ones come, or I've tried new ones. I kind of like to take a talk about ones that I've personally tried and have had success or otherwise with because I think it's a bit more I can speak, you know, from my personal experience on which is always a little bit better. So yeah, we won't be planting any potatoes outside anytime soon for sure, because we have just had horrendous rain again this week. It's you know, it's getting to the point now where it's uh apart from the two weeks over Christmas, we've had just an unbelievably wet run of weather and everywhere is is drowned. Uh, but the the good thing with that with that is that it is still early, it's still February, and while if we went back 12 months the season was well and truly up and running, it you know it it's still airly in terms of you know the this the sequence of growing and you know getting started, you know, because while weather might come mild and nice in February, generally you don't get any of that real burst of growth until we get into you know heading for the end of March and into April, and that's when we really wanted to now hopefully it picks up a lot before then, but that's when we really want the weather to be to be doing what we wanted to do at that time of the year, um nice and warm, nice and spring-like. And it doesn't feel spring-like yet. We've a lot of cold days, a lot of cold nights, some frost, little sprinkles of snow here and there, and huge amounts of precipitation and rain, um falling in various you know, hailstones, sleet, snow, and rain. So it doesn't feel spring-like yet, and you'll have heard me saying so many times previously on the podcast we shouldn't fall into the trap of reading the back of a packet, and because it says so in February, we sow. I think you feel and you know when spring has arrived and feels like spring has arrived. I did mention a couple of weeks ago that there was a day where it felt like spring had arrived, and it was, as we say, a pet day. So what we're looking for is is you know, seven days of that kind of thing in a row, and then you know you're getting to the point where it's it's up and running. Uh, that doesn't mean potatoes can't be sown, they can of course in you know in a greenhouse at this stage, and I know a lot of people will already have that done. So yeah, we'll we'll we'll we'll look at that and we'll look at the varieties. Uh something else this week, one of my favourite guest interviews on the podcast was with episode 125 with Dr. Elaine Ingham, and she founded this the the Soil Food Web uh School, which taught people about everything that's going on in the world beneath our feet in terms of soil and soil health, and she was really I suppose a lot of her teachings and a lot of her studies and a lot of her lectures were groundbreaking and very informative, huge amount of knowledge, and opened our eyes and everybody's eyes to you know the world that is soil health. And sadly she passed away this week um and yeah, not sure what age or whatever, but she was she was a really prominent person in the world of soil health across across the whole world. And definitely her as I say, her lectures, her teachings, her how she spread the message of soil health will really will really stand the test of time. People who have trained under her are now going around the world teaching the same thing, and yeah, I think her legacy will definitely live on in that. Um but sad news, it was she was a lovely lady when I spoke to her. It's a long, long time ago now, so episode 125, I don't exactly know what it was, but it's so it's about 200 episodes ago, so it's yeah, a couple of years, maybe four years ago, so it's a long time ago, but it was one of the most popular and continues to be one of the most popular episodes. I'll actually drop the link of it into the show notes here that if you haven't heard it previously, um just have a listen to it. It's it's very good, and it's one that I've actually listened back to on a few occasions because you kind of learn something different all the time, and over time you're able to piece things together and kind of something that may not have made sense at that time, sometime afterwards, twigs with you, and you you you kind of you kind of get it at that stage. So, yeah, that was very sad news this week, um, with the passing of Dr. Lane Ingham. So, yeah, episode 125, a very, very, very good one. Um the other thing, this episode is out on Friday, so it's Friday the 20th, and tomorrow is the first of my grow your own food workshops. Fingers crossed, the weather stays somewhat nice, and that we can you know get out into the garden a little bit as well. So a lot of it will be done in the polytunnel anyway. Um, but it would be nice to just have a pleasant day weather-wise, um, it'll make it a lot a lot easier and more pleasant for people anyway. Um, but really looking forward to that. This is the first time I've got back at these workshops now in a few years, and delighted that the first one is sold out. The second one, which is the 21st of March, there's only four spaces left on that, so that's going to sell out as well. Um, and people travelling from pretty long distances away to come here. So that that's kind of I really are you know, really happy with that and and looking forward to the day and hoping that everybody gets you know what they want from it. So there is people that have messaged about it and how they would love to come to these workshops, but distance is too far or whatnot. So don't forget on Friday the 27th of February, I am running uh Grow Your Own Grow Your Own Food webinar. So free webinar, basically going through now it it it obviously won't be as in-depth as you know a full-day workshop, but go through all the basics of growing your own food and you know what you'll need to get set up. And anyone that turns up onto the webinar and register for the webinar turns up live, then uh they'll be all entered into a draw, and whoever wins that draw then will get a free one-to-one consultation. So that's the prize for for attending live. There will be replays as well sent out to people, so yeah, that's that's um that's good as well. But 27th, I'll put the link of that in the show notes as well. That's Friday 27th, so sign up for that, and yeah, you'll get something out of if if you're not able to travel to to workshops or distances too far or whatever. So, anyway, to get back to this week's question, somebody starting out want to know what's the best varieties of potatoes to grow on. As I said, that is kind of a personal choice, and it also kind of depends on I suppose your eating habits, you know. Um, are you traditional meat and to veg type um in the kitchen? Is that your kind of typical meals that you go to, or are you more you know, salad type um eaters, I I guess. And you know, those things, those things play a part in choosing. But given the fact that you're a beginner, what you're looking to do is grow and have success, have success with you know a couple of varieties without going too big in year one. So too big, I d by that I mean you know, you don't go out and grow a quarter of an acre of it or an eighth of an eight acre and have all of the potential gains and potential losses of something of that size. You start small, start with something that you know is going to be successful, get that win, build your confidence, and then expand it from then. You're trialing and you know checking varieties and so on. But I'm gonna give you some recommendations here, gonna talk about my personal favorites and things to consider, what to look out for, and so on. So essentially, when we are looking at potatoes, they can be categorized into basically four categories, and you're talking about salad potatoes, and they are exactly what they sound like. They are the quickest maturing of the potatoes, they are typically eaten in salads. So they're those, you know, the ones when you go on holidays, you go out foreign, you you you get these potatoes that are eaten in salads, and they're typically waxier or wetter on the inside than you know what we like here, which is the flowery potatoes, typically. So they're that they're that style of a potato, and they can uh also come with some kind of unusual shapes, um, thinking of pink for apple as a variety, different knobbly kind of shapes on it, and maybe a slightly nutty flavour to it, uh, but they are all salad potatoes. Then you have what's called the first airlies, and these are, as the name suggests, the the first and the earliest of the potatoes that you'll be able to harvest. And you know, you're talking about things here like Sharps Express and so on, so there's those. The next ones are the second airlies. The second earlies is where my favourite potato, the British Queen, sits. So they're the second ones to mature. So the first airlies are the first and the earliest to mature, the second airlies are the sort of next ones after that, and then we're on to main crop, and main crop are, as it says, the main crop of the year. Uh, they're the ones that are typically grown uh for storing afterwards, and they're in the ground a longer time and all those sort of things. So they're your kind of four categories for somebody starting out. I would work from the categories of salads, first and second earlier, and the reason for that is speed number one. So the speed of time or the length of time between planting and harvesting is shorter than you will have with with the likes of main crops, and they're earlier as well in that you can get them into the ground earlier, you get your harvest earlier, and that then means that typically those will be out of the ground before any potential the biggest the biggest potential issue that we can have with potatoes here in Ireland is blight. Um famous famous uh famine here, obviously, off the back of the potato blight. Now, at that time we were heavily reliant on the potato crop, and you know, that blight was devastating for the country, and we all know the history of that. But blight is still today the biggest potential issue that you could have with your potatoes. But with your salads, your first airlies, your second airlies, they're typically out of the ground, uh fully matured and harvested and eaten and ready to be eaten before the the blight season kicks in. And that's why I would be suggesting as somebody who's starting off that you you work from these categories as opposed to the main crops. Now we will talk about main crops as well, but to look at the sort of the features of each of these, so salads are typically the first ones that we can harvest, they're ready in about 90 to 100 days. Now, that is very much a guideline, and that can be sp that can be faster or it can be slower depending on the season. Like for example, it's very wet, as we said at the moment, but and it's quite cold still. So if you plant in a polytunnel, for example, at the moment, your nighttime temperatures are still going to be quite low. Um, but this time last year we had quite a lot of sun and a lot warmer temperatures at this time. So the potatoes, and this is really important when it comes to planting potatoes. Everyone talks about chitting, everyone talks about planting dates of St. Patrick's Day and you know whatnot. For me, the most critical thing is your soil temperature. So whenever that soil temperature is up 10 degrees consistently, that's a good time to get potatoes into the ground. They'll actually start growing at about eight degrees, but at 10 degrees, you get vigorous, fast, quick, explosive growth. And that's what we want because the quicker the growth stages of the potato are hit, the quicker you will get your harvest. So when I say 90 to 100 days, that's a guide for salads. It could be 75 days, you know, it could be that quick if everything weather conditions-wise, nutrition-wise, water-wise, is as it should be up along. So, as a guide, salads are 90 to 100 days. They're typically grown, they could be grown inside now. Um, so a lot of people, again, as I said, in certain parts of the country might already have them in the ground, and if you do, you know, you're going to be harvesting those probably by maybe middle of May or thereabouts, end of May, uh, certainly into June, and you're harvesting at that stage. So, really, really fast is the salad potatoes, and as I say, they're typically eaten for you know those salad types. And the the number one potato in that category is Charlotte, and the reason it's it's a heavy cropper, beautiful white potato, washes when you wash it, it comes up so clean, uh, really beautiful. Um does have a little bit of blight resistance, but it's not so critical because they're out of the ground early, they're out of the ground or the planters early, and blight doesn't really be an issue with it. So Charlotte would Charlotte would be my number one choice for a salad potato. Other ones, as I said, pink for Apple, International Kidney, there's a new one this year called Empress. They're all good salad potatoes, useful salad potatoes. Um, but as a newbie starting off, I would definitely grow salads because the the speed of the speed and the length of time from planting to harvest are just short. So you get a quick win, and from that quick win you build confidence and you know you can add to it next year. They're so so easy. Get them into the ground, you're planting all these potatoes at kind of 10 centimetres or four inches deep. Then as they grow up, as this as the stalks come up, maybe again 10 centimetres or four inches up, you air top as in you throw the clay back up on top of it and you create a mound all the time for the first you know couple of months, covering those leaves as they start to push forward. That's going to do two things. It's going to protect it from frosts, late frost, because that can be quite detrimental to potatoes, late frost here up to up to maybe the middle of May. So all the time in between I can keep mounding up a little bit, uh protecting those, but also that helps the plant to form more tubers underneath that soil. So the more you you mound it up the better. It also makes it a lot easier afterwards for harvesting. Um, I will talk about I have grown them in a no-dig situation where I didn't art them up at all and they grew very well, created great potatoes, but I did have a little bit of an issue with slugs because of it. So I'll talk about that slightly later as I come to a different variety. There is some very good ones like Aloette, then sorry, that's not a salad, that's the first area, so we'll come to that in a minute. Um, that sprung to mind because it was the one that I had slug issues with. So that's kind of your your main like there isn't a lot of varieties within the category of salads. There's you know probably eight or ten different varieties, but for me I would say the best one is Charlotte. Uh so as a newbie, definitely Charlotte is worth trying. Then when it comes to first daily's, you're looking at things like Sharps Express, as I said, that's one that I am planting this year. You're also looking at Colleen, you're looking at uh Duke of York, Red Duke of York, they're brilliant potatoes. Duke of York and Red Duke of York are brilliant. Sharps Express is a brilliant potato as well, a kind of a long and oval-shaped one. As I say, that's one that I'm growing this year. Uh, Vitabella would kind of fall into the secondary category or first early, secondarily. They're brilliant, blight-free. I've grown them before, really nice potato, not dissimilar to a Duke of York, so a little bit bigger, maybe, but a very, very good potato, giving you the extra benefit of the blight resistance. So that's Vitabella. Aloyette, then would fall into that category as well. A lovely red potato forms a beautiful, beautiful red potato with uh a nice kind of flowery texture to it, which isn't that common with some of the earlies, and yeah, that that grew brilliantly for me, but I did grow it no dig, I didn't dirt up, and I ended up having quite a lot of slug issues with that in the first year that I grew it. So I feel that that one is a little bit susceptible to slugs, and so if you are growing it, definitely irrt up, and that will protect so it'll it'll mean that the the tubers are slightly covered a little bit more deeply, and potentially it would help if you did have a slug air issue in the area. Secondarily is my favourite uh and my favourite potato full stop is British Queens. Now, these ones, if you can get them in early enough, and you're not necessarily in control of this, but if you can get them in early enough in the season and you can get them growing really well, uh and when I say you're not in control of it, like uh typically people will talk about planting secondaries around you know outside March time, starting St. Paddy's Day, uh early April. And if you can get them in early enough, then potentially you could get them out just before blight season sort of kicks in. Certainly in a in a greenhouse you will, but you want to get them in early, get them grown early, and get your harvest early, because they would be susceptible to to blight. But they are for me, they're the the best tasting potato. Uh so that's British Queens. So if I was growing two as a newbie, I would be growing Charlotte as a salad and potentially something like a British Queen as a secondarily. Now, secondarily's take slightly longer to mature than first airlies and a good bit longer than than salad potatoes. But the key with all of these is, and in terms of the length of days, as I said earlier, it's the length of days that it takes to mature are given as a guide for secondaries, it's like 110 days to 120 days. But what is more important in that is how the conditions fall once you've planted, and if the conditions fall well, then potentially you could harvest that in 90 or 100 days. But you need all those, you know, you need to be able to hit all those kind of windows as you walk along, and that's why that's why you know the the guide is there, it just gives you an indication but how it grows from the time of planting to the high time of harvest, the temperatures that you get, the moisture that's Available to it, the nutrition in the ground. If all of those are right, then it can be a lot quicker. So that's your that's the kind of recommendation. So Charlotte and British Queens, if I was picking two varieties as a new grower, um, definitely worth trying. You can grow both of them in containers or in the open ground. So if you're you know new and you don't have a garden set up, you can definitely do these in potato bags or big pots or whatever the case may be. Uh, but they would be two really solid good varieties to have. Other ones, then I suppose there's loads of them. Uh, the next one that I talk about, all of these now are falling into the main crop category. So these are going to take again, this is only a recommendation, but between 120 and 140 days, these are the ones that you're going to be planting anytime from sort of March through to May, and then harvest can be anything from August through to October. And what we're looking at here is you know all of the well-known varieties. My second favourite potato is one called Record. Just think it's a brilliant tasting potato, has a slightly yellowish flesh, really, really good potato. Um and again, my second favourite, I would say. Then you have the likes of Maris Piper, Karas, King Edwards, very good potato, actually, King Edwards, uh, Golden Wonder, known as balls of flower here, not my favourite potato. I find them to be a little bit a little bit too flowery. Um, and they're not that you don't find them that often actually, but it a lot of gardeners do grow Golden Wonders, so they are a popular one. Then probably the biggest selling potato in Ireland is Rooster, and yeah, a lot of gardeners grow it as well. It's gone a little bit funny, you know, if you buy it in the supermarkets now, they they should be a really bright and vibrant red, and nowadays they don't look like that anymore. The the variety has obviously changed over the years, or you know, there's been a bit too much growing of it, or something. There's something anyway, because they were a bright vibrant red, and now they nowadays they look a little bit not so vibrant anymore, but it's still it's the biggest selling potato, and a very, very good one to grow in your garden. Uh, Santanta is a very good version, looks very similar to rooster, um, has blight resistance, but that's been questioned quite a lot over the last number of years. So it was stated to be almost fully blight resistant. It's quite difficult to get these days, not grown commercially here much, even though it is an Irish Plato, it's not grown commercially here, I don't think. And so it's very, very hard to find the seed for that. But it was a blight-free variety. As I say, the the blight resistance was definitely being questioned over the last couple of years, but a very, very good variety nonetheless. Uh, Care Pinks, brilliant variety, well known, traditional. Uh certain areas it would be the go-to potato. I mean, we we do kind of have regional ones as well, but Care Pinks will be a hugely popular one here. And in terms of blight-free varieties, there is the usual suspects, the Sarpos, so Sarpo Una, Sarpo Axona, Sarpo Mira. They're all very, very good, very, very good blight-free varieties. Sarpo axona is the one that I have grown, so I have personal experience of that. I've never seen a potato with as big a leaf cover. There was stalks out of these ones that were four and a half to five feet tall, like really huge canopy on it, and not a single bit, not even a single blemish of blight all year. Uh, really good harvest from it, very nice tasting potato if you leave them in the ground for a long time. So they kind of they kind of mature a little bit in the ground and they become quite flowery. So really nice potato if given a little bit of time to mature. And that was a tip that was given to me by Klaus Leitenberger a number of years back when he was on the podcast, that the SARPOs, generally speaking, if left in the ground a little bit, they kind of, as I say, mature a little bit and become slightly better tasting. Um but they're they're really good, they're really good uh blight-free varieties. And blight-free is a really good way to go for if you're a beginner gardener. You know, so if you do decide that you want to grow a main crop and have something for later on, then definitely to go blight-free is a good idea because it just takes out that element of having to to spray or having to treat in any way, shape, or form. And that's really important because for any of you to listen to the podcast for a while, I had a beautiful uh bed of British Queens, and I went through my holidays, and when I came back, they were just completely flattened with blight. Now I was still able to harvest and still get you know some harvest out of it, but it certainly knocked it back and it didn't get to fully mature. And you know, if like that's going to be true for most people in you know who are growing at home with for themselves, they're they're they're not going to be consistently able to do it. There's going to be that little one gap. And if it just so happens that it falls at a at a period where there's high blight pressure, then potentially you can come back from your holidays and see all your all your potatoes flattened. And it's a little bit disheartening. But with the blight-free varieties, you just don't get that. You know, you can go away, you can forget about them, you can come back, and as I say, sarpoaxona didn't seem to matter what was going on, it just grew and it was so vigorous, uh, so shiny and bright and really good potatoes. Then afterwards, the canopy was so healthy looking all the time, and yeah, totally oblivious to anything that was going on blight-wise. Uh so I definitely at the time, going back a number of years ago, I would have been skeptical of those because, in terms of taste, people said they weren't great, but having grown it now, I could definitely say it's it's as good as any potato. Maybe not the British Queen, but yeah, very, very good. Um, so they're the kind of key key things. So if I was choosing you know a couple of potatoes as a new bee, it would definitely be Charlotte for salads, British Queens, because it's by far, in my opinion, the best tasting potato. And then for main crops, I would choose a blight-free variety just to give you that sort of peace of mind that you know if you do miss out or if there is heavy blight period and you know you're not able to keep on top of treatment or whatever, that you you will still be able to have a great harvest for it. And I think that's that's a key point. So, yeah, that's um I hope that answers the question. I think it does. Um, yeah, lots going on. Looking forward to tomorrow's first scroll your own workshop. Second one, there's only four spaces left. So if anyone is thinking of doing that, you you should get it booked because it's definitely going to sell out. And for anyone that can't travel to those, as I said, the webinar on the 27th should should give you lots of knowledge to you know to help you grow on your own food this year. So, yeah, simple enough episode, definitely one I've covered before, but maybe from a slightly different angle in that it's you know somebody looking to grow for the first time and want to be sure on on what they should grow. So hopefully those recommendations help. I'm sure there's varieties that I've missed out on. If I have, definitely drop them, let me know, drop them in the comments or whatever. The you know, there's thousands, absolutely thousands. I don't know the if the last time I checked, is it maybe four or five thousand different varieties of potatoes across the world? So I'm sure I've left loads out there. Um, but they're kind of some of the staples, I suppose, of the Irish garden. So hopefully, hopefully that answers the question for you. And that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening, and until the next time, happy garden.