Weeding the Web

Veg plant review: Egg and Chips from Thompson and Morgan

Some plants are just made to raise a sceptical eyebrow, and this year it was Egg and Chips from Thompson and Morgan that furrowed the brow. An aubergine grafted onto a potato? What's promised is an average of 4 aubergines per plant and up to 2kg of potatoes. Egg and Chips is also supposed to be so easy to grow that you barely need instructions. "More than just a novelty," say T&M.

Thompson and Morgan's own productive plant

Not what eminent horticulturalist Graham Rice said about it in the Telegraph when Egg and Chips made the list for Plant of the Year at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. "A clear winner in the gimmick department" were his exact words, and he obviously felt more than slightly dubious, saying:

Most gardeners find it hard enough to grow good aubergines – red spider mite in the greenhouse, flea beetle outside and aphids everywhere… not to mention a need for far warmer conditions than the humble spud requires. This idea is the triumph of marketing over horticulture, its sheer novelty got it on the shortlist.

Growing Egg and Chips

My plant arrived at the beginning of May, about six inches high, with a graft between potato and aubergine that needed careful handling. I planted it with no expectations. I've had barely any luck with aubergines - to the extent that I gave up trying years ago, having come to the conclusion that the reason I got no viable fruit was that I couldn't give them a glassed-in spot with enough light. This time, the plant took its chance in the garden.

Into an inverted compost sack, black face out to soak up the sun's warmth more easily, a sheltered position, and off we went.

Much to my surprise, it grew a very good-looking aubergine, about the size of my hand, and another much smaller one about five inches long. Much to my annoyance, I seem to have accidentally deleted the photo I took, so I can't show you my triumph.  

There was no problem deciding when to pick the aubergine (they parted company with the plant sometime in September when something - snails, I'm guessing, began to regard them as tasty morsels). Judging the potatoes was harder. The plant showed absolutely no sign of dying down, so I finally broke in October and turned it out of the bag. Aubergine harvest slightly disappointing in comparison with mooted average harvest. Potato harvest...?

My complete potato harvest from Thompson and Morgan's Egg and Chips plant

Yup, that's it. One very small potato.

I have to say that it tasted very nice. Apparently, many different cultivars were trialed, for several years, to get the best combination of tasty and robust veg. That bit certainly worked. Thompson and Morgan haven't revealed which cultivars they chose, and it's a shame as I wouldn't mind giving the aubergine another go. I roasted it in the oven in slices with other veg to go with the Sunday joint and itwas one of the best I've tasted.

But harvest-wise? I think we can admit to a problem. I was much better at watering this year than I was with the compost comparison potatoes I grew last year, but those harvests were bounty in comparison.

The answer to aubergines?

Might it, however, be the answer to my aubergine-growing problems? The potato plant is meant to support the aubergine better, in our cooler soils and climate, than the aubergine's own roots. Certainly, while I got less than half of the promised harvest, the harvest I got was encouraging. I might be tempted (at a moderate cost) to grow this just for the aubergines, though with the prices quoted on the T&M website (confusingly £14.99 for one, or 15.99 for two), we can safely say that won't be any time soon.

However, it's a fun plant, moderately diverting. I'm sure other people will have been more successful (such as Sandra at Greenjottings). Or possibly not (Michelle's harvest on Vegplotting was nearer mine on the aubergine front).

If you've tried out Egg and Chips this year, do comment below. Leave a link if you've blogged about it and I'll add it to the end of this post.

 

 

 

Jazzy potatoes - new and improved salad potato?

The last harvest: 15.5 oz, grown in SHL, "displayed" in a normal size Mason mixing bowl.

This year I've grown Jazzy potatoes - five tubers, each one in a small black plastic growbag. Thompson and Morgan, who handed them out in February, said of this salad potato, which is vaunted as an improvement on Charlotte, "We've been amazed at the high numbers of small tubers coming from Jazzy; we harvested over 80 tubers from just one 8 litre grow bag." 

It has an RHS Award of Garden Merit*, and isn't actually all that new, having launched in 2012 with a pretty heavy-duty PR campaign that saw it grace the shelves of shops, including the Co-op and Harrods, in distinctive, high-quality packaging. According to its very own website, "Market-men tell us that it’s 'doin’the business'. Whether that’s down to the good looks, versatility or entertainment value, Jazzy has wide appeal."

[Pause for thought... "entertainment value"???]

Jazzy is a waxy potato which, it is said, can be steamed, boiled, mashed or roasted. I neglected my duty here in only boiling them but, cooked this way, we found them to be a mild-tasting potato, without great character, that were perfectly pleasant with Sunday lunch merely buttered and salted. The skin was virtually non-existent. It's also just as well that they are waxy, as the spuds varied enormously in size, yet the smallest held their shape and texture when boiled as long as the larger ones. (Yes, I know you're meant to cut potatoes up to the same size, but when you've got a significant number the size of peanuts... Honestly, I don't bother.) There's no doubt that, grown in the right medium, they're a good-looking spud.

With five different bags in growth, I used this as an opportunity to compare composts. Here are the yields:

• Harvested 19th July. Grown in Sylvagrow. Weight: 15 oz.
• Harvested  26th July. Grown in SHL. Weight: 16 oz.
• Harvested 2nd August. Grown in mix of Dalefoot wool compost and garden soil. Weight: 17½ oz.
• Harvested 9th August. Grown in Sylvagrow. Weight: 16½ oz.
• Harvested 23rd August. Grown in SHL. Weight: 15 oz.

All the plants had pretty much died down by the time I started harvesting the first bag, so I doubt if the later bags increased much in weight, if at all, during the time they were waiting to be harvested.

The most notable difference was that the crop grown in the wool compost and garden soil had far more tiny potatoes and tended to a bit of scab. Those grown in the other composts had no scab and fewer potato "peanuts".

Is the yield disappointing? Well, after taking grower error into account (i.e. I'm an erratic waterer and they did occasionally dry out enough for the plants to wilt), it's worth considering that the blurb from T&M makes it clear that the excitement is around the number of potatoes, not the weight of harvest. Personally, I'd rather have fewer, larger potatoes. 

Over at Home Grown Veg, a comparison with Home Guard (22 potatoes, 1½ lbs) and Jazzy (30 potatoes, between 1½ and 1¾ lbs) shows that you'll get a pretty similar weight over fifteen weeks' growth. Given that Home Guard are first earlies and Jazzy are second earlies, this doesn't seem immediately comparable, but second earlies are generally ready in around 13 weeks, so they've had a fair crack of the whip and I'd say that the yield isn't exactly jaw-dropping.

Still, much effort has been put into making this potato a star. Fans can follow it on Twitter (@jazzy_potato) and watch it in its own video. My feeling is that this "small potato with a big personality" is more of an "average potato with a big advertising budget".

But perhaps you've found different. Have you grown Jazzy this year? What did you think?

* Report from 2014 can be read here.  Michelle at Vegplotting checked with Thompson and Morgan, who have had good reports of high weight harvest (as well as number of potatoes) - you can read what she made of them in her post, Potatoes: Heart over Head.

Tomato blight samples wanted for research

At the end of last week I had my first Smith Period of the year. I know this because I'm signed up for Blightwatch. A glance at their chart today tells me that I'm already halfway into another SP. A glance at my tomatoes tells me that one fruit has already succumbed. Sigh!

Still, blight strike is not in vain. I've been secretly hoping for a touch, so I could do my bit for science. James Stroud at Bangor University would love to receive leaf samples from anyone whose tomatoes or potatoes have been affected.

James is conducting research in a collaboration with the Sarvari Research Trust, the not-for-profit company that researches late blight and has given us the blight-resistant Sarpo potatoes.

There are various strains of blight and preliminary studies have suggested that some prefer to lodge in tomatoes, others in potatoes. "Understanding which strains predominate on tomato," says James, "may help plant breeders develop tomato cultivars with better resistance."

Send James an email ([email protected]) and he'll send an info pack and mailer for your samples. Blighted potatoes on the same site are also of interest.  Packs come with pictures to help ID the disease, but if you're not sure that what you've got is blight, James still wants to hear from you. He'll be in touch with everyone who sends something.

So, I'm off to snaffle my leaf sample. Isn't it satisfying when you can wrest good out of bad?

Easy potatoes

Does it ever strike you that we gardeners actually feel better for working too hard?  I put it down to some deep-seated Protestant Work Ethic. If it's not hard work, we don't think we deserve any reward.

I'm gradually working my way down the potato bed, harvesting no-dig Sarpo Mira as required. I've grown no-dig potatoes in the past but, even then, it was more labour-intensive than necessary. I buried them under 6 inches of straw - straw that needs covering with grass clippings to keep it from blowing away and that needs a fair amount of watering in dry weather.  You can leave the straw in place to rot down after the harvest, but it was pretty messy.

This year I've been thinking of creating a bed for espalliered fruit, but haven't fancied clearing the turf. So, inspired by Naomi Schillinger's no-dig experiment last year, I clipped the grass short, piled on compost, nestled potatoes into it, covered them with more (the whole compost layer is about 5 inches deep) and left them to it.

No, I didn't earth up. No, I haven't found any green potatoes. No, there's no slug damage.

I suspect that the yield isn't as great as it would have been if they'd been buried 6 inches deep, but it's possibly not that different. When I grew them under straw and made a comparison, the difference in yield was very small.  The huge pluses are that I haven't had to dig (for which my back thanks me) and it takes moments to pull up a plant and sift through the compost for the potatoes.

And, with future plans in mind, I haven't had to clear the grass. So, I'm wondering: when potatoes are described as a great crop for clearing the ground, do you think that has always referred to the digging involved, and the leaf canopy restricting weed growth? Or have we forgotten how easy it is just to throw on compost and get a harvest while we wait?

Bloggers' tips on growing potatoes in containers to produce a high yield

The post I wrote on growing potatoes in containers last September is currently attracting quite a bit of traffic, reminding me that I promised to round up the advice of bloggers who'd had a go at growing 100 lbs of potatoes in a 4 foot square container.

Just to recap, the idea is to earth up potatoes as they grow, with the idea that the plant will continue to produce stolons (and therefore potatoes) along the length of the stem, filling the container with potatoes at all levels. Results have been, almost without exception, disappointing, with potatoes at the bottom of the container, where the seed potato was placed, and a lot of empty soil above.

But... Let's revisit Phillip Cairns at Mudsongs. He had a go three years running, honing his methods but without great success. Last September he wrote to me: "If we don't get good results this year, we're done trying. We'll update the page on our website if the mini potato tower is successful (though we have our doubts)."

Well, go and have a look! Against his expectations, he harvested 33 lbs (15kg) of potatoes, double his previous year's yield. He says:

Many of the potatoes we harvested from our mini tower this year grew near the top of the tower just below the surface of the soil (and most of them were large potatoes), which seems to indicate that the potato tower hilling process actually works.

The bloggers speak - can you increase yields of potatoes in containers?

Growing potatoes in pots will certainly make your patio more productive, but is it, as suggested by How to Grow 100lbs of Potatoes in Four Square Feet, possible to create a bumper harvest by continually earthing up the plants?  The idea is that by earthing them up all the way to the top of a large container, the plants will send out far more stolons and the container will, by harvest time, be bung full of spuds, all the way to the top.

In Potatoes in Containers we looked at expert opinion, which takes a very dim view of the likelihood of this. However, a number of garden bloggers have given it a go. So, how have they fared?

Potatoes in containers - can you increase the yield?

Some activities are just plain bizarre. And growing potatoes in containers, when you have a perfectly good vegetable patch, seems like one of them. Especially as they have less space to grow and need more watering.

So, when my husband came home with two packs of these Haxnicks' potato planters (pictured) I had to bite my tongue. No point in discouraging food production, even on a bijou scale.

But would it be bijou? Floating around the Internet is the suggestion that if you earth up a potato plant well enough, it will send off more potato-producing shoots, or stolons, and you’ll get a much bigger harvest, distributed throughout the container.

The idea seems to stem (hah, sorry!) from a piece in The Seattle Times. In 2005 Greg Lutovsky was quoted as saying that, when growing potatoes in a box, you could “steal” the tubers from the bottom of the box (removing the bottom slats, then replacing them) throughout the season. “Unless you steal all of them during the growing season, in the fall you should end up with a box of spuds—as much as 100 lbs.”