The Potato House

I am delighted to be continuing to host some Guest Bloggers on The Pink Wheelbarrow to give you some new ideas and fresh takes on gardening and growing your own food.

I am thrilled to welcome Amy Skea to tell you a little about their family run business in the heart of Scotland which has been supplying potatoes to farmers across UK and Europe for many years.

“Potato House grew out of a need to service smaller orders for gardeners, allotment growers and market gardeners. 

The Potato House website is dedicated to the gardeners and small passionate growers who are looking for high quality seed potatoes with unique taste and specific characteristics. We offer a wide selection of Speciality, Heritage and Organic seed potatoes.

If you visit our shop you can browse through the different varieties to find exactly what are you looking for. We have colourful varieties, pink skin or purple flesh as well as more “normal” varieties.

We get many potato questions such as:

🥔 What is the latest you’d recommend people put potatoes in?
The first thing to say is that you can plant ‘earlies’ at any time – they will always be ready sooner than maincrop. Early varieties can be ready to dig in 90-100 days; while maincrop can take 120-140 days. So there is no such thing as being too late to plant earlies.

Generally potatoes can be planted as soon as the risk of frost has gone – so in Cornwall or Pembroke this might be early/mid February; while in Scotland that might be mid April.

Potatoes can be planted in gardens and allotments all throughout May giving a harvest all through Summer and Autumn.  They are easy to grow and a perfect project for kids.

🥔 Do you recommend home gardeners chit or not chit their potatoes?
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. Chitted seed will be ready to grow much quicker once Spring arrives and the soil warms up.

The main concern for potato growers is the dreaded blight – this is what caused the Irish Potato famine. Blight will arrive in your plants at some point so the key is the get your crop chitted, and planted early so that you have a good crop before the blight arrives. 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 4 weeks to come through the ground.

🥔 Are your daughters really named after potatoes?
😂Yes and no! Mrs Tattie did NOT know that there was a Morag potato until she had been registered! And we also have Catriona, but the potato is pronounced differently! We unfortunately don’t grow either commercially, but have had them both on our patio!

We have a special offer on just now: get a 2kg net of either Maris Peer or Setanta for only £9.90 – that includes UK delivery.  If you are missing someone just now, why not send them some potatoes?  If you can say it with flowers you can say it with tatties! We are processing about 80 orders a day and are despatching most within 3 business days of order during April 2020. 

🥔If you have any other potato questions, please let us know via Facebook or Twitter.”

I am delighted to let you know that Potato House has offered readers of The Pink Wheelbarrow an exclusive discount on some of their varieties: 10% discount for 1kg nets (Maris Peer, Setanta, Colleen)  using the code PinkWheel10. There are no restrictions on how many nets can be bought and they have good stocks of these varieties and don’t anticipate running out, however if they do, they shall try to offer an alternative.  This offer is not valid with any other offer and this code is valid till the end of June 2020.

All Potato House images used copyright of Angus Forbes Photography.