Choose your delivery date. January or February will give time to chit and plant in March or April. See FAQ for full details. For all EU AND Northern Irish Customers please pick a day before the end of December as we cannot guarantee delivery in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Unique blue skin, white flesh Sarpo variety with excellent overall disease resistance. It’s ideal for roasting and chips because of its high dry matter.
Discounts for bulk buying any variety of 25 kg hessian sacks. See wholesale page for full details. Applied automatically.
Orders will be dispatched after November 2020. We aim to dispatch within 3 days and then delivery will take 3-4 days. Prices include UK delivery. Some varieties are only available from Mid December – these are clearly marked on the product page
For ROI there is an automatic flat rate delivery charge, you do not need to contact us about this. If you are from elsewhere we can provide a quote. See FAQ for further details.
PLEASE NOT THAT WE MAY BE UNABLE TO PROCESS ANY ORDERS TO IRELAND – INCLUDING NORTHERN IRELAND AFTER DECEMBER DUE TO BREXIT THEREFORE A DECEMBER DELIVERY WOULD BE BENEFICIAL. This is obviously beyond our control. It is very strange and incredibly sad to write this, but unfortunately we cannot guarantee that we will be able to deliver after 31st December this year.
If you wish to pick up we offer a 15% discount. By default, this option will only appear for local postcodes. If yours doesn’t appear, use our postcode DD3 0QN in the “Deliver to Address”. Also to help us, put “pick up” in the “deliver to address”. Note that your order may still take a day or two to organise and we will contact you when your order is ready. We operate on a working farm with machinery, vehicles and livestock and so please keep children and pets inside your car when picking up. This is only available for orders up to £50 – if you wish to pick up a larger order, please contact us prior to ordering.
If you want a specific week, let us know in the information box and we will do our best to send it out then. We recommend that you get your potatoes in plenty of time to chit. If you plan to plant in March, we would suggest delivery in late January/February to give 4-6 weeks chitting, if you plan to plant in April, a late February/March date would suit.
All products ordered will be sent together in the same delivery. If you require us to split the delivery please let us know – an additional postal charge will be payable.
Most varieties are available between November and mid-May. However we grow a lot of varieties in small quantities and these will sell out quite fast.
To ensure your order arrives in the best possible condition, deliveries will be made as soon as all the varieties on your order are available, using an appropriate courier or postal service.
If you choose to pay by BACS or cheque we will not begin to process your order out until your payment has been received and cleared. This could take a few days and may not be checked each day.
During times of frost or low temperatures deliveries will be held back until more favourable conditions prevail.
Some deliveries may be delayed if we have to re- stock our nets, we will try to keep you informed of any delays.
Chitting is simply waking the seed potato up after its winter dormancy ready to grow.
It is definitely a good idea to chit, but to do this you need to get your seed nice and early – maybe January or February if you are in the South of England and March or April if you are in North of Scotland. The aim is to have your potatoes come through the ground after the last frost in your area as the new plant is susceptible to frost.
Chitted seed will be ready to grow much quicker once Spring arrives and the soil warms up. Chitted seed should come through the ground in about 2 weeks.
If you buy your seed in April or May, however, then there is little or no advantage in chitting since the soil temperature will be ok for planting, though the unchitted seed will take c4 weeks to come through the ground.
Remove the seed potatoes from the net as soon as you receive them (as the shoots will grow through the nets and can break if you try to remove them) and put them in an egg carton in a sunny window sill. The shoots will start to sprout and when they are around an inch long they will be ready to plant.
Early Main Crop and Main Crop take around 15 – 22 week respectively to mature. Main crops can be planted till around mid May depending on where you are in the UK
There is a common myth that you can cut the tuber up to give a better yield. We do not advise this. Tubers have enough stored energy to get to the surface and produce a healthy crop. By cutting they you are risking the tuber going mouldy as it has no skin to protect it and lower yields.
Potatoes like to be watered but not water-logged and so ensure your pot or area has good drainage.
Potatoes need a sunny site away from frost pockets – the newly emerging foliage is susceptible to frost damage in April and May.
The traditional planting method is to dig a narrow trench 12cm (5in) deep. The seed tubers are spaced 37cm (15in) for maincrop varieties in rows 75cm (30in) apart. Apply a general purpose fertiliser at this stage. When the emerging shoots come through, you need to “earth” or “mound” them up – this is counter intuitive. Do this several times. This encourages downward growth – the new tubers will jostle for space and any growing near the surface will turn green.
Small crops of potatoes can also be grown in large, deep containers, and this is a good way of getting an early batch of new potatoes. Fill the bottom 15cm (6in) of the container with potting compost and plant the seed potato just below this. As the new stems start growing, keep adding compost until the container is full.
With maincrops for storage wait until the foliage turns yellow, then cut it and remove it. Leave for 10 days before harvesting the tubers – this allows the skin to set, leaving them to dry for a few hours before storing.
These potatoes have a fluffy middle when cooked. They are not only great for family favourites such as ruffled up roasties but also tasty jackets or chunky chips. Parboiled floury potatoes freeze well.
Click on pictures to enlarge. Although Maris Piper is mentioned, any floury potatoes can be used in these recipes.
Sticky Orange Potato Cake and Mexican Wedgies
Recipes are taken from the “AHDB – Potatoes more than a bit on the side” site and used with permission. Click on logo for some more wonderful recipes! AHDB is a members based programme of which Potato House is a member.
We’d love to see any pics of your kitchen creations on our social media pages – see links at the foot of the page.
Description
This unique member of the Sarpo family sits apart from its brothers and sisters. Blue Danube is an early main crop potato which is truly beautiful to grow in the garden. It has excellent overall disease resistance but unusually for a Sarpo, does not have high resistance to foliage late blight. However it has strong resistance to late blight of the tubers. This translated to a variety that my develop potato blight on its leaves just as it is reaching full maturity but this in no way affects its harvest or yields.
Because of its rapid growth, striking form and “strange” tuber colour, this makes for a great project potato for kids. Once harvested, Blue Danube can be used for any cooking purposes where high dry matter is desired and it excels as a roast potato. Because of its inbuilt dormancy it can be harvested in autumn and then kept in a cool dark place right though until spring without sprouting or softening
Tubers have some resistance to bruising and splitting. Trials have found good resistance to blackleg, skin spot, potato virus Yo , dry rot (Fusarium coeruleum) and potato leafroll virus. This variety has low resistance to dry rot caused by Fusarium sulphureum. Tests for resistance to potato cyst nematode demonstrated resistance to Globodera rostochiensis Ro1 and susceptibility to Globodera pallida Pa 2/3, 1. Susceptible to silver scurf and common scab.
Parentage 78.139.25 x VK.69.491
Breeder Sárvári Research Trust
I have planted and harvested Blue Danube for two successive seasons, 2019 and 2020. Despite having a heavy clay with flints soil and lifting the potatoes in November 2019 and late October 2020, the tubers remained sound and virtually slug free, unlike other potatoes grown in adjacent rows which have been badly infested with slugs.
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Mervyn Iles –
I have planted and harvested Blue Danube for two successive seasons, 2019 and 2020. Despite having a heavy clay with flints soil and lifting the potatoes in November 2019 and late October 2020, the tubers remained sound and virtually slug free, unlike other potatoes grown in adjacent rows which have been badly infested with slugs.