Harvesting potatoes and protecting Blackberries

A few days ago I lifted some more potatoes up at my Courtmoor plot. This time they were the "Sarpo Una" ones. This is a Second Early variety marketed mainly as a salad potato, but one which will grow bigger if left longer than normal for a Second Early, so it is effectively an Early Maincrop. In common with the other Sarpo varieties, it has high levels of disease-resistance.

The potatoes on the plot have not done well, to be honest. The light sandy soil has been incredibly dry, and we have had no significant rain for weeks and weeks. My efforts with the hosepipe have been just about adequate to keep the plants alive, but that's all.

The yields so far have been very poor, so much so that I'm seriously questioning whether it will be worth growing any potatoes at all there next year. This is the yield from FIVE plants - 1.56kgs!

If the quality of the tubers had been outstanding I might have said that growing them was worthwhile, but they are not that great. Their skins are rough and they have a fair bit of scab. Definitely not up to the standard of the ones I grow in containers in my own garden! Having eaten some of them now, I have to say I'm not impressed. They were dry, hard and tasteless!

Well, even if the potato crop was a bit disappointing, the red tubers looked nice in one of my signature "Harvest Basket" photos!

The other thing I want to mention today is that I have finally found something with which to protect those ripening Blackberries.

I found an odd-shaped scrap of old Enviromesh in my shed at home, and I have fixed it in place with some twist-ties. Not pretty, but hopefully it will do the job. It just needs to be there for a couple of weeks to keep the pigeons off the berries.