Sárpo spuds

21.08.2023 - 12:04 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty

Back at the end of May, I picked up two bags of Sárpo Mira seed potatoes, discounted at the garden centre as it was past prime spud-planting time. When I went to GIY UK two months later, I still hadn’t found time to plant them.

It was there that I met Dr David Shaw, from the Savari Research Trust – the place where Sárpo potato varieties are grown and developed in the UK. He gave a talk called ‘Growing Potatoes Sustainably’.

He began by reminding us that potatoes are very nutritious, with just about everything you need for a healthy diet (the Irish survived on just potatoes and buttermilk). They can also be very productive, with yields of 2.8kg per plant commercially.

The price we pay for these virtues is the number of pest and disease problems that potatoes are susceptible to (which are location-dependent), and problems with weed competition. There’s also the problem that potatoes start to sprout in storage – they can’t be stored indefinitely in the same way that grains can.

According to Dr Shaw (and he collects samples, so he would know), potato blight is worse now than it used to be, and it has adapted (and keeps adapting) to our growing conditions and potato varieties. A resistant plant today is likely to become susceptible to blight in the future.

This is where Sárpo varieties come in, as they are bred to be blight- and aphid-resistant, and they are easier to store as they have strong dormancy. They’re great for breaking in an overgrown allotment, especially when using sheet mulching.

Sárpo varieties are indeterminate, meaning that they don’t reach a certain size and stop, but keep growing. Once the plant is well developed, it’s time to have a little bit of a dig and see how big the spuds are – if you leave them, they will