Next years seed catalogues have started to arrive, including the potato one and even though our home grown potatoes were basically a waste of time and an even bigger waste of money this year, I am still planning on trying them again next year.
The difficulty is deciding what to grow, and being rational about it. Just from flicking through the catalogue I have found two collections or specials that I want, one of them being the Mimi that ended up growing really slowly and then got blight or drowned in grass so we didn’t get any at all of the verity.
And the ‘specials’ are on top of the first early, second early, early main and main verity that I feel I should grow, I have still not picked out verities but if I grow one from each then I can see which does best, sweet potato and pink fur apple.
I don’t want to grow to many, but I don’t want to grow to few… five Mimi tubers sounds far too few, but is twenty far too many? And I don’t know if to go for old verities like I did this year, or more modern ones that might do better. I like the idea of growing old verities but if they don’t do any thing then what is the point? Should I carry on trying to grow them in sacks or try them in the ground?
I think there is a lot of thinking, planning and reading to be done
A Life Less Simple 
I’d try them in the ground as you get a higher yield if they can root down more. We planted 10 Robinta spuds, a red skinned variety, for the first time last year and got about a dozen good sized potatoes off each plant. They stored brilliantly and kept us going until about November – their skins go wonderfully crispy when baked in the oven. I found it hard to track them down again this year (perhaps because they cope well with both very dry weather and wet weather) but managed to get some from the Garden Centre in Coleford. The potatoes weren’t as big this year because of choppping the tops off earlier due to the blight but they still taste as good and are well worth growing.
Why not share an order with a friend or through LETS – you could have 10 tubers of each. We grow Charlotte in the ground and they are excellent
I did try sharing my order of seed potatoes last year but didn’t really have many takers, just a few people through LETS but hopefully this year as we now have neighbours on the allotment site then it will work a little better