Tuesday 19 January 2021

Potatoes 2021 - Heritage Research

 

We now have a patch of garden, which we are rescuing from oblivion.

Usually we buy our seed potatoes from a gathering of the West Yorkshire Organic Gardening Association (WYOGA) - there will be no gathering this year.  So, looking further afield...

In 2020 our potato harvest was not good - a very wet growing season, and it looks like there were soil problems in the bit of garden assigned to potatoes...

Thinking about a seed potato that can tolerate wet conditions and poor soil...  

Potatoes 2021 has become Heritage Research..

I bought lumpers...

https://potatohouse.co.uk/product/lumpers/

The lumper is a heritage variety, famous, or infamous, for its part in the Irish Famine, 1845-1852.

There has been a lot of discussion of the resurrected lumper...  This is Cormac Ó Gráda, The Lumper Potato and the Famine, on History Ireland...

https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-lumper-potato-and-the-famine-11/

See also...

https://laidbackgardener.blog/tag/irish-lumper-potato/

'...The ‘Lumper’ was pretty much forgotten about until Michael McKillop of Glens of Antrim Potatoes in Northern Ireland found it among other varieties of heritage potatoes in 2009. He grew the plant, produced more and now sells the spuds as a St. Patrick’s Day novelty at Marks and Spencer stores throughout Ireland. It’s also being grown in Canada at the University of Guelph’s Elora Research Station in Ontario, Canada and at Canadian Potato Genetic Resources in Fredericton, New Brunswick...'

http://www.thedailyspud.com/2013/03/11/lumper-potatoes/

'...the Lumpers I sampled had a decent flavour and a texture that tended towards the waxy end of the scale, while the mere fact of their availability is a story that has piqued people’s curiosity no end. With coverage including a front page article in the Irish Times last week, as well as a piece on RTE’s Six One news, this, undoubtedly, is the best press the Lumper has ever had...'

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/schools-invited-to-commemorate-famine-by-planting-lumper-potatoes-1.3832992

'...Schools across Ireland are being encouraged to sow Lumper potatoes this spring as a way of commemorating those who died during the Famine of the 1840s...'

I did not only buy lumpers, of course... 

I also bought a number of Sarpo varieties...  

Blight resistant.

http://sarpo.co.uk/

We are waiting for the seed potatoes to arrive.  And then we wait for warmer weather.

Patrick O'Sullivan

January 2021