Plumb centre

I'm looking forward to hearing Sherie Plumb talking at North East Derby DA of the NVS tonight on spuds. I've heard her before but there's always something new you can pick up even if it's largely the same talk. Sherie is always trying to learn new tricks and adapt the ways she does things, a real thinker, so it will be good to hear about her 2011 experiences when she didn't get it all her own way like she usually does it must be said. She didn't win the coloured spuds at the Llangollen National and also the collection of spuds at Harrogate where I believe she only came 3rd, although she did win the British Potato Championships at Dundee again, plus most other single plate classes at most other championships so she's still the Queen of potatoes. I came 2nd to her at Westminster and 3rd in the collection at Malvern and it's a pleasure to be competing with her.

Next year i'm limiting my spuds to two varieties only, Kestrel and NVS Amour. I've found it much easier to get good skin finishes on coloured spuds, and indeed throughout the season I never really had a single blemish on any of my Amour and they were a real joy to clean up. I shall grow more of these two varieties than normal and skip whites for a year which I find take much more cleaning up to get them gleaming. For some reason white spuds also seem more prone to silver scurf in storage than the coloured varieties although I did have a few spots on some Kestrel. I'm hoping I can get a good set of 5 for my collection of 6 veg at Malvern and also a set of 4 in the Millenium class which will be main focus in 2012. I was very happy with how my spuds looked in my mini collection at Malvern. They were the best spuds in the 6 or 7 sets that were benched.

I shall be using fresh peat once again for my 2012 spuds and not get tempted to use the old stuff from this year. Instead I will be sieving this old peat over the coming Winter, bagging it up and using it in some pipes for long carrots in the greenhouse. You need much more medium to fill pipes than you do conical bore holes in sand, so with some vermiculite, silver sand plus the usual nutrients I'll be giving this method another go in 2012, having grown 8 heavy (if a little uneven roots....erratic watering) this season. A friend who works for a large building firm is getting me some more plastic drainpipe material (unusable offcuts...honest!), as I will be hoping to use the long carrots from these on my collection of 6 at Malvern also. I could fit about 20 of these pipes at one end of one of my greenhouses and will be quite happy to empty all of them out to get a set of 3 if necessary.