Cold and Wet

Friday was a miserable day. It would have been miserable most times of the year but especially so in July the supposed height of summer. It rained most of the morning and into the afternoon depositing another 10.0mm of rain bringing July’s total up to 103.8mm or looking at it another way 2½ times our expected monthly amount.

To add insult to injury, by 05:30 Saturday morning, the over night temperature fell to a ridiculously cold value of 6.8°C. That’s our coldest July temperature in the 3 years I’ve been recording weather data.

Watching Gardener’s World last night Monty Don lifted some of the early potatoes that he had on trial. He had mixed results regarding yield and tasting quality. He did have one variety which broke up quite badly when cooked.

I’ve been lifting a selection of our early potato varieties that I am trying this year. The last one I lifted was Premiere.

The yield from just one root was pretty good I thought but on cooking these broke up badly and the flavour wasn’t anything special. I always thought that dry weather was to blame for potatoes breaking up on cooking but clearly that’s completely wrong as the plants have been continually wet since planting in April. 

Monty thought that lack of flavour in his potatoes might be due to too much rain. The best flavour of the varieties from our plot was Vales Emerald. Other varieties lifted have been Marilyn and Casablanca. Neither of these 3 varieties broke down on cooking. Another point against Premiere in this wet summer was the amount of slug damage to the tubers which far exceeded that of the other varieties although until more roots are lifted the amount of slug damage for the different types cannot be accurately determined.